They start off that way, so it is good for that, but that flips around in later problems... coding them is not the hard part. Many require nontrivial mathematical insight to solve in any practical time frame.
Makes me wonder if there's something like Project Euler but for more programming-like problems. Logic, application of well known algorithms, modelling, etc.
Stack exchange has their competitions, where, for example, you write a bot to compete against other bots, as well as code golf and things like "fastest solutions" to problems. I once wasted two weeks just reading the problems.
