Back to primes! So far we’ve been able to get away with being a little greedy with our compute when playing with primes. Now Euler is ratcheting up the difficulty and we’ll have to focus on efficiency.
Problem 5 is a lot of fun (well, “fun”) because (1) there’s a very simple program requiring no math that calculates the answer, but (2) that program would need impossible amounts of compute to actually run, and (3) you can figure the answer with pen and paper super fast if you think about the math a bit.
Project Euler problem 4 feels like a step back in difficulty. The numbers involved aren’t too big so we don’t have to worry about resource constraints. The subproblems it breaks down into are fairly straightforward.
Problem 3 is where Euler starts forcing us to consider resource limitations. Before, the most straightforward solution worked just fine, even if it used more resources than a less complex algorithm would.
Our first, and certainly not our last, encounter with the Fibonacci Sequence on Project Euler. Before we dive into Problem 2 together take some time to chew on it yourself if you haven’t already.
This is a lovely problem to start with. It has a straightforward brute-force loop solution as well as a nice analytic solution where you can calculate the solution directly without the need for much programming.
How I found Project Euler and pivoted into tech