The Little Book of Programming Challenges

The twenty seven challenges contained in this booklet are designed to challenge and inspire students whilst helping them on their journey to becoming a ‘computational thinker’. The ideas contained in the booklet will also provide useful teacher stimulation when planning lessons.

Many of the challenges include extension activities which students should be encouraged to attempt. The tasks are not language specific, start quite simply and progress to become more challenging. Examples of the tasks contained in the booklet are:

• Write a program that will display a joke, but will not display the punch line until a key is pressed. The extension is to display the punch line in a different colour.

• Make a game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’ against the computer. The extension is to ensure that the entry is valid.

• Write a 'guess the number' game where the computer selects a random number and the user has to guess. Extension: reverse the game so that the user chooses a number and the computer has to guess the number.

• Create a simple treasure hunt game using a two-dimensional array.

• Create a program to play the card game ‘Blackjack’