What is competitive programming and why is it important?

What is competitive programming? Competitive programming is a sport. You have to solve a problem with code that is fast, consumes the minimum amount of memory, and is often practically unreadable. It is super popular among university students and those trying to get into big companies, primarily because it helps them get placed in those companies.

Are there any competitive programming competitions with no age limits?

And then there is whole bunch of individual competitions with no age limits, and some team competitions (like OpenCup, SnackDown etc.) with no age limits, so you are totally fine for those. There are strong red coders who started competitive programming in mid-20s (for example, you may check this thread: How old are you?

How long does it take to become a competitive programmer?

, 25+ years of software engineering, mostly in C and Perl, mostly in the BSD networking stack and Unix utilitie… Competitive pogramming is not a trivial game . It requires continuous practice and brushing up your concepts. Have patience . It does take some time to master basic concepts required in competitive programming.

Is competitive coding the only way to clear an interview?

In a lot of places, competitive coding is not the only way to clear an interview – there are all kinds of people running all kinds of companies. A person who agrees with my PoV, and is running a company would not be hiring people on their “competitive” knowledge alone.

How long does it take to learn competitive programming and DSA?

Sitting for interviews like this and hoping you can solve a toy question you prepared for 3-5 months learning just DSA and competitive programming is one way. There’s another way – it’ll work with fewer companies and people, but you’ll enjoy it, and learn a lot of real-world things along the way.

How do I become a competitive coder?

You’ll also be more useful than those people who only learn “competitive coding” for the sake of it. Build something. Anything. And then build more on top of that. Have a strong portfolio. Have a complete skillset which is useful for companies. Have mastery with a tech stack – own it.

How can I jump to competitive programming?

To jump in competitive programming you can follow an approach of project-based learning in which, once you know the syntax of the language and basic fundamentals, you can create multiple challenging projects and after making a lot of projects you will realize how logics work in development and that will help you to increase programming ability.

How to become a successful programmer?

Programming really needs a lot of patience, so don’t get discouraged or DO NOT GIVE UP IF YOU GET WRONG ANSWERS. This is the point where most of the people lose interest in programming. Keep trying for a day, week, months if a voice inside your head says that your method is right.