Rosalind.info is somewhat similar to free code camp in that they give you challenges, clearly defined input and output, and it is up to you to figure out how to make it work, and measure your result as pass/fail. Probably NOT the place to start if you are new to coding, as you would need another resource to figure out the components of the challenge solutions. They give you 5 minutes after downloading challenge data to upload your solution.

There were 6 challenges, each of increasing complexity. The interesting part was the number of times each challenge was solved.

Challenge 1 solved 62,282 times

Challenge 2 solved 50,502 times

Challenge 3 solved 41,878 times

Challenge 4 solved 36,005 times

Challenge 5 solved 27,686 times, and

Challenge 6 solved 23,541 times

The pattern is similar with the other challenge areas. The next section I am attempting is the "Bioinformatics Stronghold" which has over 100 challenges. The easiest solved 75,714 times and the hardest challenge being solved only 117 times.

Over the site there are a total of 284 problems and 130,323 participants... maybe I am not as late to this party as I originally thought!

Coming from the computer science direction may give a slight advantage on the coding, but I will need to build domain knowledge along the way.