Hello, checkiomates🐱‍👤!

This week, we analyze Python's enduring popularity, compare the performance of package management with uv vs. pip, and sharpen fundamental skills with a string manipulation quiz. Our mission challenges your spatial reasoning with a Hide and Seek game, requiring you to use Euclidean distance feedback to locate a hidden goal on a 10x10 grid.

💡TIP

On Easy difficulty, each of the few starting stations is dedicated to a distinct data type.
If you want to discover all CheckiO features, visit our tutorial. It's a longread, but it's worth it!

🏁 MISSION

Colder-Warmer by bryukh -

You have been given a map of 10x10 cells and in one of the cells we've hidden your goal. You can move to and from any cell in the field. On each move you'll get informed if the move places you closer or further away from your goal, compared to your previous location. Your function compiles data about previous steps, each step is a list of list, where first and second elements are your coordinates (row and column) and third is the info on how much closer you've gotten (colder or warmer) -- "colder" is -1, "warmer" is 1 and "same" is 0. At each step you need to return the coordinates for your next step. If your step places you within the goal cell, then you win! You should find the goal within 12 steps.

checkio([[2, 2, 0]])  # [0, 2]
checkio([[2, 2, 0], [0, 2, -1]])  # [3, 2]
checkio([[2, 2, 0], [0, 2, -1], [3, 2, 1]])  # [4, 1]
checkio([[2, 2, 0], [0, 2, -1], [3, 2, 1], [4, 1, 0]])  # [3, 1]

📖 ARTICLES

Why Is Python So Popular in 2025? -

From powering AI and data science to driving web development and automation, Python continues to dominate in 2025. Discover why in this blog post.

uv vs pip: Managing Python Packages and Dependencies -

Compare uv and pip with benchmarks, speed tests, and dependency management tips. Learn which tool is best for your Python projects.

Strip Characters From a Python String Quiz -

Try these questions to check your understanding of default stripping, custom character sets, and the difference between stripping characters and removing sequences.

👩‍💻CODE SHOT

What do you think the following code does?

def checkio(values: list[int]) -> list[int]:
    
    if not values: return []
    res = [values[0]]
    for i in values[1:]:
        if i >= res[-1]:
            res.append(i)
            
    return res

🙌 Thanks for your attention! Hope to meet you at CheckiO, as well as at our Instagram and Twitter! We are really interested in your thoughts! Please, leave a comment below! ⤵