Show HN: 10-minute programming challenge. Let's do more of these.

http://missstep.com/?origin=1600+Pennsylvania+Ave%2C+DC&destination=64+w+15th+st%2C+New+York+City

by pud • 14 years ago

45 33 14 years ago

missstep.com

beobab• 14 years ago

It says fastest route, but would someone walking prefer the shortest?

brador• 14 years ago

In general, shortest would be fastest for walking (unless the difference is large and fatigue sets in).

Or you could analyse ground gradiants for steepness and find the flatest. Combine with your own personal fitness levels and solve for a better optimal route :)

Deestan2• 14 years ago

> In general, shortest would be fastest for walking

Traffic lights, crime-addled regions, embassies (I wouldn't dare jog towards a guarded embassy carrying a backpack), loose gravel paths. All these will slow down walking considerably.

Or outside the city: Marshes, mountains, thick forests, muddy hill slopes.

pud4• 14 years ago

In the API call, I'm setting "travelMode:google.maps.TravelMode.WALKING" - so Google is return the correct result.

So the problem is the copy I wrote. I'll leave it be since my 10-minute limit is over. But I agree I should've said "The shortest walk is x miles..."

eddie_the_head• 14 years ago

http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer

vineet2• 14 years ago

This site looks good. But I wondering if someone has a similar list of apps that are one steps larger than just algorithms - must have UI and be useful.

jmduke• 14 years ago

It's certainly not comprehensive, but here's the shortlist of stuff I make to try out a new language, in order of increasing complexity:

-- Sudoku verifier

-- library generator (scan all of the music files on your drive and compile a list of artists)

-- dictionary app (using Wordnik API)

-- flexible calculator that can detect postfix v. prefix

-- Sudoku solver

-- Hidato solver (which is essentially King's tour, but cooler)

-- tumblr API wrapper (or really any OAuth service)

-- n-gram language classifier

prezjordan• 14 years ago

I love what they do, but unfortunately r/dailyprogrammer leaves a bad taste in my mouth because they started off with challenges copied from my site - http://programthis.net

mibbitier• 14 years ago

OVER_QUERY_LIMIT

Such a shame that Google started limiting and charging for their APIs :(

pud4• 14 years ago

I just fixed this by changing all API lookups from server-side to client-side.

I think Google's limits are per IP address, so doing the lookups client-side should keep my app working for any reasonable amount of use.

Woo!

nandemo2• 14 years ago

I'm curious, did you just happen to have a domain name containing the word "step"? Or that was done after the initial 15 minutes?

snippyhollow2• 14 years ago

For my daily (walking) commuting, it says 2.4km, which is right, for 24k to 33k steps, which is wrong: that's <= 10cm steps. It's one order of magnitude away from the truth.

pud4• 14 years ago

Is it possible you're reading it wrong?

I just put in a 2.4km address and it came out to ~2,500 steps.

See this permalink (click "go")

http://missstep.com/?origin=Clayallee%209%2014191%20Berlin,%...

subsystem• 14 years ago

Localization issue: var miles = prettyDistance.replace(",","").replace(/[A-Za-z$-]/g, "");

snippyhollow2• 14 years ago

I don't think I'm reading it wrong. Your link gives me:

"The fastest route is 2,4 km, which will take approximately 24,855 to 33,140 steps if you walked it."

JfromSw• 14 years ago

Had the same issue. Put in a 0,1 km walk, came out to 1k+ steps

nemetroid• 14 years ago

It's doing some text parsing on the "pretty text" returned by the Google Maps API instead of using the provided distance in meters, and it's probably failing due to some localisation issue. It strips "," from the text, maybe your locale uses "," as a decimal separator leading to the distance being parsed as 24 km?

yitchelle• 14 years ago

OK, I'm confused, what exactly is the challenge here? The creation of a website (one with its own domain) that calculates the number of steps?

TamDenholm• 14 years ago

Tech used?

tantalor2• 14 years ago

From first glance, JavaScript, Google Maps API, and jQuery.

pbjorklund• 14 years ago

Guess that reading the google maps api to find the walking distance function would have taken me more than 15 minutes.

The 15 minutes concept would probably make good katas to keep stuff you have already used up to date in your memory. Would love to see a collection of small challenges like this grouped under different kinds of tags. This one might be javascript, google-maps for instance.

I would use that.

basugasubaku• 14 years ago

I get: "The fastest route is 232 マイル, which will take approximately NaN to NaN steps if you walked it."

brechin• 14 years ago

I like the simple implementation. One small UI complaint: the text on the button is hard to read because of low contrast.

TimJRobinson• 14 years ago

You should record a video of you doing the next one, I'd love to see your process and tools that you use to get things done so fast. I'm always trying to be as fast as possible but even to me 15 minutes from nothing to done is mindblowing.

Show HN: 10-minute programming challenge. Let's do more of these.

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