Once a month, our office transforms from a quiet workspace filled with the sound of typing into a vibrant playground full of ideas. It’s time for the Coding Challenge. Our developers switch their minds into a different mode: creative, sharp, and ready to surprise.
Normally, everyone works in their own bubble, using familiar tools. But during these challenges, the walls come down. The Coding Challenge is all about creativity, experimentation, and learning from each other.
Our developers receive a task that they can complete in various ways. The goal is to think outside the box, try out new techniques, and learn from each other. Everyone is free to choose how and with which language or tool they work. Developers can spend up to two hours per person on this during working hours. Afterwards, we share the results and dive into them: everyone shows what they came up with and explains how it works. The winner receives the Coding Challenge certificate.
The first challenge: build a CSV Analyzer that can process a huge file with minimal memory usage and maximum performance. Use a generic process function, and as a concrete test: find the item with the longest name.
Two hours of build time. Any language of your choice. Afterwards, we compare runtime, memory usage, and vote on code quality. The winner? Chris, who took on the challenge in C++, a language he hadn’t used before, achieving the best balance between performance and clean, explainable code. A technical kickoff that immediately set the bar high.
Our most recent challenge was: create a Snake game, using any tools or language of your choice. Our developers each took their own approach, resulting in a variety of Snake game versions. The winner of this challenge was Ilse. Her game didn’t just feature a score and high-score system and a creative visual design—it also introduced a unique gameplay twist: if you collect the same piece of fruit twice, the snake loses a segment of its tail. This made the game both surprisingly strategic and incredibly fun.
You can play the winning Snake game too!
