# Philosophy

Overmind strives to be the following:

* both accessible and challenging for developers of all levels 
* rewarding for users, intellectually and financially
* a high-signal reference point for a developer's skill and creativity

With those objectives in mind, Overmind quests are crafted according to the following principles:

1. **Self-contained**: require minimal context beyond the essential tools
2. **Creative**: require original thinking
3. **Unique**: have no close analogue available online
4. **Educational**: teach the user a new concept, method, or technique
5. **Applied**: relevant to real-world problems or applications

Overmind quests are unlike most coding challenges, in that they take inspiration from problems developers encounter in the wild. Sorting a k-sorted array in O(n log k) is not a good challenge.

Overmind quests are unlike most open source bounties, in that they have a low contextual barrier to entry. Users need not be familiar with a specific codebase or product in order to tackle them, therefore ramp-up time and effort are significantly lower.