An alternative I've tried is to ask Claude Code to create programming exercises or challenges on some topic and then ask it to check my work after every step while giving feedback. It worked surprisingly well, so this is the right call for CodeCrafters because AI is far more effective and cheaper at creating educational content and being a personal tutor.
by 0xpgm
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You'd think all these executives making investments into Agentic coding would throw money at something like Codecrafters so that their engineers ramp up their design and architecture skills.
by tevli
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Its really sad that a platform like this is having problems; they are a better version of leetcode that actually incentivizes users to learn and not just cram solutions.
by javiermolinar
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Really sad. I completed SQLite this year and I absolutely loved it. At the same time, I am no longer coding by hand and am realizing that it's almost impossible to learn anything new vibecoding. There are no incentives for that.
by zane__chen
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It's really said to hear that making this as a business did not work well. Codecrafter has helped me learn new skills and gain confidence as a developer. Help me grow from a junior to senior.
by gorgmah
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It's true that AI is making traditional algorithmic abilities matter less in the job market, so people naturally are less drawn to it. Just look at the stackoverflow demise story: SO is also a community for people who like solving coding issues, and they are experiencing a really steep decline in traffic.
But I think the other, maybe even more significant issue is that the market for coding-related tools and services is completely oversaturated these days. I recently saw that the daily launches on producthunt increased 20 fold due to AI. The market for pure software stuff is extremely competitive nowadays.
by SwiftyBug
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This is sad. I had a blast implementing my own interpreter from scratch. I saw, first hand, the effort Sarup put in trying to make CodeCrafters thrive. We had a few product feedback video chats, which were all much enjoyable. I tried to get my current employer to pay for CodeCrafters for the engineering team, but, as others in this thread already said, it's hard to justify this spending these days because of AI. Honestly, I think that it's a little short-sighted of the companies to not invest in hard skills for their employees, now more than ever. I definitely became a better engineer with the help of CodeCrafters.
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