I like Project Euler. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a website with a few hundred math/programming puzzles to solve, and it keeps track of which ones you’ve solved, who else has solved them, etc etc.
Yesterday, I was working on solving one of the problems. The way you know you’ve solved it is by entering the answer into the website, and they tell you if it’s right.
I wrote some code, ran it, and got an answer. They said it was wrong. So I double-checked my code, ran it again, and got the same answer. Wrong. I re-wrote the code from scratch, and got the same answer. Wrong.
Finally, I got fed up and googled the answer. Someone’s blog listed what they claimed was the answer – but it was wrong.
So I copied the algorithm used by that blogger, and ran it. It produced my original answer. Not the answer they posted on their blog – the same answer I had all along.
I submitted it again, trying not to scream in frustration. This time, it was accepted.
I don’t know why the site didn’t accept my answer the first couple times. I don’t know why that blogger posted the wrong answer but the correct algorithm. I guess Project Euler just wanted to waste some of my time?
(If anyone’s interested, you can see my Project Euler profile here.)