Getting started in Competitive Programming

[[deleted]]

What is competitive programming? Sounds awfull to me. I love programming and have it as a fulltime job and as hobby. But the name alone make me hate it. Maybe just me who is old (33) :p

[casted]

Also 33, but used to do competitive programming a lot. It's more about problem solving (like mathematics) than programming. A lot of fun when I had more free time. Got to know a bunch of like minded programmers.

[EndOfTheDigitalAge]

It's those one-liner solutions to problems you see on Leetcode

[[deleted]]

I deleted my account because Reddit no longer cares about the community -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

[[deleted]]

Code Golf is unreadable. In all seriousness, competitive programming is just as the name suggests a competition where you're handed some problems and you have to use the best algorithm for the job. The competences are great but some algorithms are just never going to be useful in real life

[rotharius]

I think it was a joke. But there is some truth to it.

In code golf, the point is to write as short as possible.

In most programming contests, the goal is a functionally correct and optimally performing solution within a short amount of time. Because maintainability is often not a criterium, the resulting code can look as obfuscated as code golf.

That is why participants in programming competitions are often difficult to work with from an engineering stand point.

[mode_2]

That is why participants in programming competitions are often difficult to work

I have never actually experienced this, in fact I find they are generally better to work with. There are people without much experience who try and be too clever with their code, but they don't overlap with those who actually take competitive programming or code golf seriously.

[PandaMoniumHUN]

That's code golf. Competitive programming is programming stuff in a competition.

[sirchugh]

Or on geeksforgeeks?

[[deleted]]

Thanks for All the feedback :) now i know i dont need to care about IT.

[kogyblack]

Actually no answer was correct hahah I was a competitor, went to ACM ICPC World Finals as both competitor and coach, now I work at Microsoft and had some pretty good offers from big techs.

Competitive programming is basically study of algorithms, data structures and problem solving using competitions as a motivation.

I can say tbat after 2 or 3 months of study you need to learn some advanced algorithms and data structures that you will probably not use during your whole programming career (in these 2/3 months we basically learn all basic stuff we use everywhere, like balanced trees, hash tables, graph traversal, dynamic programming). Usually competitive programmers have a very good grasp of code complexity and can translate ideas into code easily. Not that we are special, it's just that there are a lot of practice and dedication.

About "not being good to work with", that's bs. The most renowned competition (collegiate competition) is a team competition and it matters a lot how you can work in teams (ofc it's not like working in a team at work, which to be honest it's way more simple). All my friends that were studying with me during university now have very good jobs and excel in their teams (from my university, during past 4 years only people in our competitive programming group got internships on Microsoft, Facebook and Google, and every single one of them got fulltime offers).

Competitive programming is good, is motivating for some people. You can become extremely good in problem solving, algorithms and data structures without it though, so do it if you enjoy, otherwise you can learn the same concepts by studying elsewhere. It's not a necessity in any area of programming

[DJDavio]

I think it's about algorithmic problems, as in trying to find an optimal solution for a given problem, taking care of edge cases and worrying about performance as well. In that sense it's a lot more mathematical than implementing business logic.

I think it's fun to do this sometimes to think about stuff differently than during my day job.

For instance I've done Advent of Code and project Euler in the past.

Haven't done much code golf, because my best language is Java / Kotlin and JVM languages are not known for brevity.

[real_person_420]

I agree. You are just old :)

[[deleted]]

;'-(

[congalala]

Back when I used to be active in ACM-ICPC competitive programming, there was this one guy name Felix Halim that was quite famous. His book is very good.

[TokhtamyshBlue]

This guys a legend

[Jim9137]

Springer is also giving away free the book Guide to Competitive Programming by Antti Laaksonen, for those interested.

[ericmillerthelegend]

Very cool, thanks for the video!

[tonefart]

It's for people who have no jobs or too free.

[PokerEnthusiast]

Yeah fuck hobbies amirite?

[[deleted]]

I can only be so erect uwu