Solve First, Then Ask AI: How a Year of Daily Coding Challenges Taught Me More by Delaying the Help

freeCodeCamp Community
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Hi everyone,

Over the past year, I worked through freeCodeCamp’s Daily Coding Challenges one at a time, every day, focusing on Python solutions, and kept my work in a public repo. Along the way I landed on a workflow that made a real difference in how much I actually learned, and I wanted to share it here in case it helps other people working through the DCCs.

The rule I set for myself was simple: solve the challenge completely on my own first, with no AI assistance at all. Only after I had a working solution did I bring in AI — and even then, not to write code for me, but to get feedback on what I’d already done, see alternative approaches I hadn’t considered, and dig deeper into concepts the challenge had touched on.

That ordering turned out to matter a lot. Struggling through a problem on my own — dead ends included — is what actually built the skill. Using AI afterward, once I already had skin in the game, turned it into a genuinely useful tutor: it could point out where my approach was clunky, show me idioms I didn’t know, or explain why a different solution worked better, instead of just handing me the answer before I’d done the thinking.

One side effect I didn’t fully expect: sticking with Python every day, rather than also doing the JavaScript equivalents, pushed me to actually study the standard library instead of reaching for whatever felt familiar. A lot of the “alternative approaches” I discovered afterward turned out to be built-in tools I hadn’t known existed.

If you’re working through the daily challenges and wondering how to use AI without shortcutting your own growth, I’d encourage trying this: close the AI tab until you have a solution, then reopen it to review and extend what you built.

I wrote up the full workflow in more detail in my repo’s README, if you want to see how I structured it day to day: GitHub - karelplanken/fcc-coding-challenges · GitHub

Happy to answer questions if anyone wants to try something similar.

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Congratulations on completing all these! And thanks for sharing your experience here and what you learned along the way. I’m CC’ing @moT01 who designed the challenges so he can see this, too.

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Congratulations @karelplanken :tada: That’s quite the achievement - and definitely a good use of AI to help you learn :clap:

Just out of curiosity, do you recall any specific challenges that you liked a little extra? I’m quite proud of many of them, but “Left-handed seat at the table” was particularly fun to create for me.

Also, what are you going to do now that there aren’t new challenges every day?

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Dear moT01, first and foremost thank you for designing these challenges and thank you for reaching out. I haven’t noted down specific challenges that I like better than others, but I really like the challenges that can be solved in just a couple of lines particularly when using the “batteries” that come with Python (standard libs). I did make a list of the harder challenges and those usually involve general CS methods (DSA), like for example backtracking and so on. I must say, however, when looking at my list a number of challenges has lost their toughness to me . Apparently my skills have improved :smiley:…

My plan for the upcoming year is to review and refactor my solutions to the challenges, straighten things out so that they meet all the strictness I impose on them (and myself of course :wink: : please see pyproject.toml, additionally I have type checking mode set to strict), Recently I released a couple of tools on my scripts I orchestrate with just, inspired by (and started from) Nacho Lorca’s mold who had a talk on Europython 2026 in Krakow Poland I attended.

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That’s awesome. Congrats again.

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Congratulations on completing the daily coding challenges! :tada: That’s honestly a huge achievement.

I’m also currently solving coding challenges, so I wanted to ask: how long did it take you to get to this level, and how much time did you usually spend on each challenge?

Since I’m still new to programming, what would you recommend I focus on to improve? And once I finish the challenges, what do you think would be the best next step: building projects, learning something new, or something else?

Thanks for sharing your experience! :blush:
@karelplanken

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Dear donut,

Thank you. I’m learning “how to program” since several years. I think I started seriously and dedicated in 2016 with PHP and “switched” to Python somewhere in 2018 or so. My first experiences, however, date way back, actually the 90’s where we used HTML tables for webpage lay-out :slight_smile: .

I also worked in LaTeX and the like and did some ActionScript. Along the way I also practiced C, C++, and Vanilla JS. In hind sight I might have chosen a different path but what I think is most important, is that you enjoy what you’re doing and setting a realistic goal (the latter is a hard one :wink: ).

My recommendation would be: start building things you need in daily life and alongside study the basics. The basics are super important and once you get the hang it will fall into place. The best way is getting your hands dirty, get stuck, study the topics at hand and avoid getting lost in all the rabbit holes that will be on your path.

Kind regards, Karel

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As a coding student, I can really relate to this approach. Trying to solve the problem myself first helps me understand the logic better, and using AI afterward feels more like learning from a mentor than just getting the answer..

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Dear Karel,

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience and advice with me! It’s really encouraging to hear from someone who has been learning and working with programming for so many years.

I especially liked your advice about building things that are useful in daily life while learning the basics alongside them. I think that’s exactly what I needed to hear, because sometimes it’s easy to feel like I have to learn everything before I can start building something.

I’ll definitely keep your advice in mind: learn the basics, build things, get stuck, figure out what I’m missing, and keep going without getting lost in all the rabbit holes. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Thanks again for your kind and thoughtful response. I really appreciate it!

kind regards(I’m already copying your writing style a little bit :grin:)

Donut

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very good. Doing a whole year is great work