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What are some good competitive problems for a programming contest?

Should I leave programming and take up something else instead?

  • I am very interested in competitive programming but I never score well in any of the online platforms even after repeated efforts to do well. Here are my stats: TopCoder - grey (max rating was around 1200) Codechef - appx. 1500 World Rank (Short), appx. 2500 World Rank (Long) Codeforces - Pupil (Max was Specialist) SPOJ - <0.5 points Any contest I have ever participated, I have failed (I rank somewhere in the middle every time) I have a hard time tackling even div 2 500-pointers and sometimes, I even faced minor problems in div 2 250-pointers. I rarely can understand what to do in a SPOJ question. Even though I find the Codeforces questions somewhat easier but I fail every time because I fail to consider corner cases. My love for competitive programming and CS rose from solving CodeChef practice questions, but I fail in achieving anything good in any contests. Considering that I am an EE major, is it still okay if I continue working hard for sharpening my competitive programming skills, or should I take up something else? I have no experience in EE-related things except for basic circuit design. PS. I aced my CS classes in college till date.

  • Answer:

    You do realize that competing in these contests isn't going to make you any better? It's the practice after the contest and studying the editorial. PS: If it's a hobby, There is no need to worry about becoming better. It's all about your overall happiness that you gain from the activity.

Anonymous at Quora Visit the source

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First, CS classes in college has no connections with competitive coding. It seems like you are frustrated. You have lost all hopes. You are not trying hard enough. The most difficult part of competitive programming is getting started with it. Once you get started with it, you will develop passion and confidence that will drive you to learn more and perform much better. At this point you should ask yourself if you really want to continue doing competitive coding? Do you enjoy it. In my opinion you should give it one more chance. Do not go for Hi-Fi problem. Do not even look at the scoreboard/rank/rating/points etc. It will only disappoint you. Try studying one concept say Graph Traversal (BFS, DFS) from tutorials, books , geekforgeeks or any other source. Once you are done understanding it, read the pseudo-code and try to implement it. Try hard. Keep trying this in a loop. If you still have trouble, try to read an actual implementation and note your mistakes. Once you are done learning one topic, find problems related to it. Use problem classifiers for this purpose like this one : http://ahmed-aly.com/Categories.jsp. Start by solving easy and direct ones and then you can move on the difficult ones. This approach will help you solve problems and will also boost your confidence. However, once you gain enough confidence, leave this approach. This approach decreases the ability to identify the algorithm required to solve a question. One you are pro, select random questions and solve.

Ashish Kedia

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