I just started learning to code late December-Early January and yes it can be challenging, but 8kyu katas are very doable. It's a bit confusing at first, but this site is very helpful when practicing on your own. Obviously you should be learning the material outside of codewars.. maybe try youtube or Udemy, but this site is a useful tool when practicing your problem-solving skills and learning how to use your resources. Plenty of people use and enjoy codewars..I don't think they're the problem here.

It was stated above in the comments, but to save you some time...

"Because the requirement asks "How many years does the town need to see its population p0 >= p inhabitants?", so you need to repeat the increase of population until p0 < p.
If you repeated the while until p0 <= p, you'd get an extra year in the result (e.g. if p0 = p, you'd get 1, but the expected value would be 0!)."

Wondering the same thing..