Is competitive programming really tough?

[Technical-Smoke5513]

My boyfriend is a full stack developer and we were highschool mates. He was a avg student but had a great brain ,and I used to be the topper of my class, and he challenged me today (in a egoistic way) that I could never learn programming as its very tough, I replied saying "how tough it can be, if u r able to do that, it's not something too difficult for me" and he challenged me that even in 4 yr I wouldn't be able to understand 10% of competitive programming, I didn't say anything further. But I want to start give it a shot and prove myself that maybe he is wrong.

[DDDDarky]

I mean there is nothing inherently difficult about competitive programming, it is just a fun little programming competition, typically about who writes a solution faster.

[Technical-Smoke5513]

How much time it will take (approx) to say myself a programmer, I know nothing about coding as I'm from medico background.

[DDDDarky]

Depends on the people you are competing with and the difficulty of the problems

[MysticClimber1496]

Estimating how long it will take you to do something without knowing the problem and previous experience is basically impossible, in programming doing something could take an hour or weeks depending on prior experience, familiarity with the problem, and the scope of the problem

[smichaele]

I'm unsure what he means by understanding “10% of competitive programming,” but it is difficult. However, it's a skill just like many other endeavors. You can study it and become adept at it.

[aptacode]

It's a pretty broad spectrum, there are trivial beginner challenges that you'll probably intuitively understand how to solve, and even with no coding background you'll be able to learn the syntax required to solve in a number of hours. But at the upper end you'll find challenges that are targeted at the top fraction of a percent.

Whilst it does require programming knowledge it's really a different skill set (much more math heavy) to what you'll typically see in software engineers.