CodeCrafters (YC S22)
Programming exercises for experienced engineers.
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Michael Seibel

CodeCrafters (YC S22) - Recreate your favorite developer tools from scratch

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CodeCrafters makes interactive courses for software engineers, where you get to recreate popular developer tools from scratch. Build your own Redis, Git, Docker, and SQLite—in Go, Python, Rust, etc.

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Saverio M.
Congratulations for the launch 😄 I've used it first alone, and I found it very useful. Then, I've arranged pairing sessions on my company based on it!
Sarup Banskota — CodeCrafters (YC S22)
Maker
@64kramsystem thank you! pairing on CodeCrafters can be super fun!
Ling Fu
Why did you guys go with the `git push` workflow as the method for code submission? (as opposed to a web-based experience?)
Rohit Paul Kuruvilla
Maker
@ling_fu great question! We've found that our target audience (engineers who already have some experience) tend to prefer using their own editors/IDEs. When you've spent hours customizing your VS Code/Vim/Emacs config, a web editor experience is always going to feel subpar. This is also heavily inspired by Heroku's git push workflow - which is known to be a gold standard in DX. That said, in-browser editors are getting better by the day. For example, GitHub Codespaces now letting you bring your own settings: https://docs.github.com/en/codes.... We might look into supporting an in-browser editing experience in the future.
Anirudh Ranganath
This is awesome- CodeCrafters definitely fills an underserved niche! Do your tutorials also include unit testing? Once i learn a new language, the next thing for me would be to figure out what unit testing library to use and how to integrate it!
Rohit Paul Kuruvilla
Maker
@anirudh_ranganath thanks for the kind words! We don't offer guidance on unit tests at the moment, but users often do write tests on their own when they attempt the challenges. It could be useful to provide at least one basic unit test though, so that users could extend from that point on. This is an interesting idea, thanks for sharing! The integration tests that we provide along with each challenge are language agnostic, and they only test external interfaces like stdout, stdin, network protocols etc. These tests are open source, but all of them are written in Go so it might not be that useful if you're learning a different language.
alana goyal
congrats on the launch! codecrafters has been a staple in my coding practice for the last 9 months now. as a vc, i don't get a *ton* of time to write code, but it's really important to me that i keep it up so that i can build & experiment with new technologies. codecrafters provides the perfect, byte-sized (no pun intended) challenges for me to complete so that i'm constantly keeping my skills sharp. when i studied cs in college, i was often frustrated at how theoretical everything felt. i didn't make a website until my senior year. i spent so much time learning data structures & algorithms, without actually learning how to build something real with them. codecrafters is different: it orients around the end-product and gives me a sense of accomplishment for building something real & useful. 11/10 recommend for anyone who wants to learn to code (start with the easy ones), up-level their coding abilities (try implementing a project in a new language), or just keep up their coding abilities with fun challenges. feature request: would love some more challenges that are less infra-y and more product-y. for example, i'd love to build my own cal.com, chatGPT, AI headshot generator, etc.
Rohit Paul Kuruvilla
Maker
@alanafanderson thanks Alana! 

 There’s definitely a lot of demand for full-stack product-y challenges like you mentioned. We’re going to experiment with some ideas in this space :) For context, we chose the current set of challenges (Redis / Docker / Git / SQLite / Grep) because:

 (a) they’re “evergreen” tools — widely used, some have been around for decades
 (b) they’re the kind of tools where learning the internals helps you become more efficient at _using_ the tool. For example: I rarely have to reach for regex cheat sheets anymore now that I’ve built my own Grep from scratch. (c) they’re easy to build tests for. All of these have structured interfaces (either they’re CLI tools, or they speak a well known protocol), and that makes it easy to test and convey error messages to the user.
This looks very promising and helpful, congrats on the launch 🎉
Srikanth Gopalakrishnan
Been a fan since the early days. Satisfies a core need in the industry. I can only pause and unpause a lecture so many times a day. Keep flying you beautiful creatives ✈️✈️ Can't wait for your next product!!
Jino Sabu
Please remove the first image and provide another image from your product.It's annoying.
Anita Kirkovska
Amazing work team! Congrats on the launch
Stan Lo
Congratulations on the launch! 🎉 I think CodeCrafters has tremendous potential in assisting companies with developer onboarding or helping developers expand their skill sets.
Kyungcheol Chang
Congratulations on your launch! Personally, I am very impressed by what Codecrafters provides. CodeCrafters is the new evolution of learning programming language with practical projects.
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