>Doing these sort of puzzles has very little to do with 90% of what programmers do. On the other hand, it's not a waste of time for a young person to just go t

>Doing these sort of puzzles has very little to do with 90% of what programmers do. On the other hand, it's not a waste of time for a young person to just go through a few of these a week as they are job hunting. And you really do get better at them as you do more and more. Certain patterns repeat, and the tricky ones usually have nice explanations that you can certainly learn from. They are also FUN if you do them in a stress-free situation outside an interview.