How can I be a Competitive Programmer from Scratch By CodingHumans
Hey there Coding Humans ,this blog is for the newcomers who have just stepped into the world of competitive programming or want to get into it . If you are already established, you might not want to waste your time but still if you wish to know you may proceed. So let’s go deeper into this topic.
There would be tons of questions in one’s mind as a beginner to competitive programming . We hope some of them might be answered here in this blog.
The Prerequisites (What you require) :
First of all, you’ll need a programming language you’re comfortable with. Java, C, C++ or Python are preferred. C++ might be more useful when compared to C because of the template library it supports. Is one supposed to master it? Nope, not at all. Just make sure you know some of the mostly used data structures such as an array (list), hash map and maybe priority queue. What advanced algorithms do you need? None. Just a few basic ones, such as the binary search and exponentiation would come in handy.
Where to begin? :
There are a lot of websites you can start with. Just DO NOT jump over to the harder questions directly and break your head. Start off with easy, gradually you’ll pick up. First of all one need to master all the basics of a particular programming , be it C++/C , Java , Python or any other programming language that you want to code with . Now I guess one Question is arising in your mind that which language to learn or master for competitive programming , for this you make see this article click here .
Okay after mastering on a particular programming language and having a strong hold on it you may now visit some online coding platforms.Some good online platforms are Codeforces, Codechef, Hackerrank, Hackerearth , GeeksforGeeks , AtCoders , SPOJ , URI Online Judge, many more.There are tons you’ll get by googling.
How often to code? :
This one really depends on you. You may spend some time daily and practice a question or two. The more time you spend practising, the sooner you’ll be better at it! To keep a check on your performance, you might wanna participate in the contests that are conducted once in a while on various platforms. Codeforces conducts contests regularly (very regularly) and one may find it tough at the beginning(unless you are gifted). Hackerearth, Hackerrank and Codechef conduct some monthly contests you may find interesting.
Speed :
“Do you have to be the flash or Quicksilver (if you are Marvel Fan😅)?” - No, you are not expected to be super fast at the beginning. Speed is a very very important factor in a short time contest, but it gets developed only when you practice enough. To get a little bit faster from the beginning itself, you might wanna do something about the most commonly used (and long) syntax for loops, taking input, etc… I mean, it would take ages to type scanf(“%d”, &input) several times. You might wanna shorten it to, say, si(input) by having macro definitions (in C). There are manyt similar fix in Python and Java too . You may have something like this, if you are a C++ user.
Where to learn? :
Almost all the websites dedicated to competitive programming have their own blogs on various topics. You might wanna google once to checkout. Codeforces has it’s user written blogs on numerous algorithms which are pretty good. Hackerearth has a wonderful collection of blogs and problems sorted topic wise.Also there are many more websites like HackerRank, GeeksForGeeks etc.. . We will write about a few of them in my our further Blogs! Moreover, you are not supposed to remember the code for every algorithm you learn (I mean, it’s good if you do, but not necessary). Once you get in the flow, you’ll have to know about many algorithms and hence it is better if you store them all at one place and just copy paste it every time you need.
Also to cover all these steps I highly recommend to you to join any of the programming platforms ,be it HackerEarth , HackerRank or any programming sites because you can learn and practice hundreds of question in just short period of 31 days. Also get in touch with our site CodingHumans as we will be dealing will latest trends in the coding problems.
And remember, keep yourself motivated. That's it !
Dream big, stay positive, work hard, and enjoy the journey.
Also we are going to publish more articles like this on Competitive Programming language and technological fields, So get in touch with us for further coding and technological blogs.
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