Build Your Own Compression Algorithm
Build a complete data compressor from first principles. You'll compute Shannon entropy, build Huffman trees, implement LZ77 sliding-window matching with hash chains, and combine them into a DEFLATE-style compressor with CRC checksums. By the end you'll deeply understand what gzip, zstd, brotli, and every modern compressor actually do.
intermediate15 lessons4 chapters15 graded exercisesPython
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What you’ll have built
Chapter by chapter. Every step is a graded exercise.
- Entropy & Frequency
- Huffman Coding
- Dictionary Coding (LZ77)
- Putting It Together (DEFLATE)
Starts in Python — solve in the language you choose in the editor, same tests either way.
Curriculum
4 chapters, 15 lessons. Each lesson is a short read, one graded exercise, and a quiz.
- 1Frequency CountingRead · exercise · quiz
- 2Shannon EntropyRead · exercise · quiz
- 3Run-Length Encoding (Warmup)Read · exercise · quiz
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