Forem: Igor Kirillov

Hyperskill's Coding Christmas Challenge🎄

Igor Kirillov — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:46:57 +0000

Fresh snow outside. Warm lights inside. The quiet days between Christmas and New Year stretch ahead like a blank canvas. You've got time between celebrations, and your mind is already reaching for something to build.

Why not enhance your skills in 12 Days of Coding challenge — a festive journey created for Hyperskill learners that runs from December 25th through January 5th? It's part puzzle, part celebration, and entirely about rediscovering the joy of programming during the most magical time of year.

Why I Built This

The holidays are a unique time. Everyone slows down, but our minds don't. I wanted to create something for those quiet moments between family gatherings, when you're sipping cocoa and feel like solving something elegant. Not a work project. Not a deadline. Just pure problem-solving for the love of it.
This challenge is my gift to the community: 12 days of puzzles that make you think, smile, and remember why you fell in love with code in the first place.

The Countdown Tradition

There's something special about counting down days during the holidays. Advent calendars, New Year's Eve countdowns — we mark time differently in these weeks. Each day feels significant. Each challenge in this series follows that rhythm, building momentum as we transition from one year to the next.

Who Is This For?

This challenge is for developers who want to stay sharp during the break without the pressure of real work. Maybe you're on vacation. Maybe you're between projects. Maybe you just enjoy a good puzzle with your morning coffee.
The difficulty curve is gentle but rewarding. If you can write a for-loop and understand basic logic, you can solve every single challenge. Some might take longer than others, but that's part of the journey.

What I Hope You'll Get From It

I want you to close your laptop after each challenge feeling satisfied. That "aha!" moment when the solution clicks. That reminder that programming can be playful, creative, and deeply rewarding outside of sprint planning and code reviews.
Plus, complete all 12 days and you'll earn an exclusive profile cover, gems, and maybe even some secret rewards from our partners, which I won't reveal just yet.

The Technical Side

I built everything in Python because it's my comfort zone, but I deliberately designed each challenge to be language-agnostic. Whether you're a JavaScript developer, a Java enthusiast, or exploring something new like Rust or Go — the logic works everywhere.
Use whatever tools make you happy. Your IDE, our playground, a text editor and terminal. This is your challenge, your way.

A Peek Behind the Curtain

Special little spoiler for dev.to readers: we're going full algorithm crash course mode this year. Await tasks that rely on the most popular computational theory questions. Good for refreshing your knowledge from that one CompSci class you completely forgot about! Can't wait to see you rebuilding Dijkstra's algorithm in your favorite language.

How to Join

If this sounds like your kind of holiday tradition, here's how to start:

Sign up to Hyperskill - https://hyperskill.org
Find 12 Days of Coding Challenge in My Learning or your Study Plan and begin with Day 1
Join our Discord community and visit the #12-days-of-coding channel for hints and camaraderie
Code in any language that brings you joy — use your favorite setup or try our playground
Most importantly: enjoy the journey!

Happy coding, and happy holidays!🎄

Hyperskill's Fright Night Coding Challenge🎃

Igor Kirillov — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 12:06:23 +0000

A miserable autumn day. Rain and gray skies. Two vacation days that aren't enough for the beach, but enough to visit your old uncle in the middle of nowhere. Wrong turns. A dead GPS. Then — a pop, a hiss. Your tire quits.

This is how Day 1 of the Fright Night coding challenge begins — a 10-day journey created for Hyperskill learners that runs from October 22nd through October 31st. It's part puzzle, part story, and entirely about rediscovering why programming is fun.

Here's what inspired it.

Why I Built This

I really love all kinds of puzzles and riddles. I think programming is the perfect sandbox for creating your own puzzles, because the possibilities are endless, and you can solve problems even knowing the language at a surface level — the main thing is being able to recognize algorithms and patterns.

For me, coding isn't just about business logic and production deployments. It's a hobby. It's a playground. And I wanted to create something that reminded other developers of that too.

The Rocky Horror Connection

When I was designing this challenge, I kept thinking about my favorite film — the horror musical Rocky Horror Picture Show. I think those who go through the challenge will definitely notice the parallels. I won't spoil what they are, but keep your eyes open for Easter eggs.

Who Is This For?

This challenge is for everyone who understands that programming is not only writing code for business tasks, but also a very fun hobby.

I tried to make the tasks as accessible as possible for all levels of developers. For some, it will just take a little more time to figure it out. The minimum requirement is simple: know any programming language well enough to understand a for-loop. That's it.

What I Hope You'll Get From It

I hope that all programmers who participate in the challenge will have a good time. The tasks will help them remember algorithms and language elements they haven't used in a long time.

And if you complete all 10 challenges, you'll earn a unique profile cover, a bag of gems, and exclusive rewards from our partners.

The Technical Side

Everything from start to finish was conceived, developed, and tested in Python. But our challenge is specifically designed so that it can be comfortably solved in any programming language.

You can use Python, JavaScript, Java — whatever you're comfortable with.

What I Learned Building This

I once again became convinced of how difficult it can be to describe even the simplest task in a way that is understandable to the maximum number of people. I learned to better abstract from my code and look at the task I just wrote from the outside. This is very valuable, especially for those who often interact with other developers and assign them tasks.

A Peek Behind the Curtain

I don't want to spoil it, but closer to the end there will be one good task for finding the shortest path, for which I had to write a procedurally generated map. It was fun.

What Day 1 Looks Like

The code to the gates is four digits. It is the first, the second, the third and the fourth most common digit in today's sequence, in that particular order. If there are equal number of appearances, higher digit should come first.

How to Join

If this sounds interesting, here's what you need to do:

Sign up to Hyperskill
Find Fright Night Challenge in My Learning and start with Day 1
Join our Discord community and check out the #fright-night-coding channel for hints if you feel stuck
Use any programming language you want — write and run code in IDE of your choice or use our code playground
Have fun!

Happy coding, and happy Halloween. 🎃

Building Hyperskill: My Story as a Developer

Igor Kirillov — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 20:36:18 +0000

Hi everyone! I’m a Tech Lead at Hyperskill — a project-based learning platform for programmers.
Here’s a bit about how I found my way into tech — and why I still love what I do.

My Role at Hyperskill

At Hyperskill, I handle most of the technical stuff. I'm the one keeping our web interface, mobile app, and IDE plugin running smoothly and integrated with our backend. So if something breaks, most likely you should blame me — sorry! ‍ ‍

My days typically start with a health check: reviewing logs and metrics to catch any issues that surfaced overnight. Then I sync with our support team to understand what challenges our learners are facing in real-time. The bulk of my work involves tracking down and fixing the inevitable small bugs that pop up across our platforms, plus implementing new features based on user feedback.

There are definitely moments when I feel frustrated by code that refuses to cooperate. But what keeps me going is knowing that our platform helps people learn new skills and potentially transform their careers. That mission makes every struggle worthwhile.

How I Got Into Tech

For most of my life, I saw myself as firmly in the liberal arts camp. While I did well enough in STEM subjects and had a knack for the limited programming we covered in school, my real passion was creative work — especially writing. I even pursued a degree in Political Science, about as far from code as you can get.

The turning point came through my tech-savvy friends and those Friday night conversations about computational theory and neural networks that somehow captivated me. I tried Python and experienced almost an epiphany: programming isn't fundamentally different from other creative disciplines! You start with a vision of what you want to create, then explore countless paths to get to that vision. It's actually very similar to creative writing if you think about it. That realization completely shifted my perspective. Programming is actually a form of art. Once I understood that, something clicked that I didn't even know was missing. One project led to another, and here I am writing code professionally for many years.

If you had told my 2015 self that I'd become a programmer, I would have thought you were absolutely out of your mind.

Building for Developers, as a Developer

Building a learning product for developers feels incredibly meaningful to me, especially as someone who taught myself programming without formal computer science training. I wish Hyperskill had existed when I was starting out. Instead, I used countless other platforms and felt every frustration that comes with trying to get a grip on those complex CS concepts.

What genuinely excites me is witnessing our student's journey firsthand. Reading posts in our Discord or comment sections under topics, I see learners making the exact same mistakes I once did, then pushing through those same mental barriers I remember hitting. Watching them struggle with complex concepts and then finally break through, that gives me real joy. Our students' success stories are what really drive me though. People around the world are completely transforming their lives with nothing more than a computer, internet access, and sheer determination. Programming is such a powerful social mobility tool nowadays. That's genuinely extraordinary, and knowing our platform plays a part in those transformations makes everything I do feel worthwile.

How AI Changed My View on Coding

I see AI as simply the latest tool in programming's continuous evolution toward greater efficiency and focus. You see, just three generations ago, developers were programming with punch cards and binary code. We've progressively abstracted away the tedious parts — first with programming languages, then keyboards and terminal screens, then sophisticated IDEs and version control systems like Git.

25 years ago, we were writing code in text editors with barely more functionality than Notepad, and 'version control' meant copying files to floppy disks. Each innovation freed us from mechanical tasks so we could focus on solving more complex problems. AI fits perfectly into this pattern. It handles routine code generation and reduces my time scrolling through Stack Overflow, which means I can dedicate more energy to building meaningful features for our students. But the fundamentals haven't changed — you still need to understand basics of programming to successfully create, verify, debug and optimize. If anything, these skills have become more critical since you can now offload syntax entirely and focus on architecture, logic, and user experience.

AI hasn't fundamentally altered my view of programming, it has simply refined it. The craft is still about problem-solving and creating value for users — we just have better tools to do some dull work for us.

Outside of Work

I'm a committed lifelong learner, so in my free time I inevitably find myself going down Wikipedia rabbit holes at 2am, discovering something like the biological differences between turtles and tortoises (they're not the same, by the way!). I genuinely can't help myself when it comes to exploring new topics. As for recharging, I like watching lighthearted coming-of-age films, reading mid-to-late 20th century American literature, and listening to jazz. Recently, I've also re-discovered absolutely amazing modern Japanese music — there are some phenomenally creative bands emerging from that scene right now. Their music is perfect for powering through challenging work weeks.

My Advice to New Learners

Be ready to learn hard and adapt quickly. Never forget that even though AI can handle routine work now, understanding how things actually work is genuinely rewarding and fun.