Competitive programming has been attaining a lot of popularity in recent years with many organizations making use of it to reach the top talent in the entire world. Similarly, many competitive programmers do even participate in competitive coding contests to upskill or even merely have fun. But do you really know what is competitive programming, exactly? Of course, once you know about it, you can take up the best course for competitive programming and ensure that you have a good career in this line.
Don’t know if you have no idea about what really is this competitive programming, how to simply compete, etc. Actually, you know competitive programming contests revolve around hunting the solution to a programming problem statement in which multiple programmers compete with each other to simply find out the best possible solution inside a predefined time limit. These programming competitions can get conducted on the web (i.e. Conducted virtually) or even offline or in the hybrid mode. The community of programmers competing in such type of an event must use their knowledge of algorithms, even common data structures, and other dynamic programming skills to write codes or build solution programs.
The winner is going to get selected based on who was able to use their problem-solving, even logical, and technical skills to come up with the most efficient and powerful solution in the least amount of time. Over the years, the reach, as well as penetration of competitive programming, have grown astronomically across the world. If you are wondering why should you learn competitive programming then here are some reasons for you to go for this path.
Structure your deliberate practice routine by circling it
Deliberate practice starts with the tools of the trade and a proper source of practice material. Golfers need balls, even clubs, and sand traps. Musicians need instruments and even sheet music. Programmers need a proper working computer and a description of what to construct. Though there are many other ways to structure deliberate practice for software development, the world of competitive programming is quite such a convenient source of practice material that it’s quite tough to ignore. The contest host provides problems, even test cases, and community. The practitioner is then simply free to concentrate on building good study habits and even purifying their learning process. Choose a problem, solve it, reflect on how your process simply worked, and repeat.
You get prepared for technical interviews
Of course, the standard coding interview has quite much in common with a programming competition. They both demands inquiries solving a clearly-defined type of programming puzzle, tend to focus on well-known sort of algorithms rather than simply domain-specific technologies and even reward quick solutions. There is also some sort of differences. In the realm of a programming competition, you have access to a computer, even while in an interview, you are generally coding on a whiteboard. Competition issues incline to be harder, mainly once you have some experience. And online judges don’t really require you to simply explain why your solution does work. But the main point is that experienced competitive programmers are going to find the coding part of an interview, a dreaded sort of experience for most developers, to be rather simply straightforward.
You work on challenging issues
In the realm of discussions of competitive programming, people sometimes point out that the skills developed for competitions are simply in excess of typical software development jobs. Here are a few examples of that line of thinking:
A lot of software is there that gets written in spaces where optimality doesn’t matter because a lot of smart people have smartly engineered the system to make it immaterial. The reality at work is that most of the time, you don’t actually need to deal with [algorithm optimization] issues and, if those are in fact real issues, one or two individuals in your team or the company are going to simply and smartly handle them because they are just smarter than others.
It is absolutely the right thing to say that many people with a software development background get hired for jobs that don’t really demand extensive knowledge of algorithms or even performance optimization. Some of these jobs may not even include much coding at all. But clearly, there are even quite a couple of developers working on operating system kernels, even compilers, graphics rendering engines for multi-player games, and much more projects that demand specialized skills. If you’re interested in that kind of job, then it does not really matter what the typical programming job appears like. The skills that you learn preparing for programming competitions are going to be quite relevant to the overall job that you are simply looking for.
Get used to working on hard tasks
In the realm of discussions of competitive programming, folks sometimes point out that the skills developed for competitions are somewhat overkill for typical software development jobs. But you know what, there is diversity in this thing. You may learn to solve varied sorts of problems. Moreover, it is absolutely true too that many people are there with a software development background get hired for jobs that don’t really require extensive knowledge of algorithms or performance optimization. Some of these types of jobs may not even involve much coding at all. But clearly, there are even quite a few developers working on operating system kernels, even compilers, graphics rendering engines for multi-player types of games, and other sorts of projects that demand specialized skills. In case you are interested in that sort of job, then it does not really matter what the typical programming job appears to be like. The skills that you do learn preparing for programming competitions are going to be quite relevant to the job that you are searching for.
Conclusion
To sum up, you should take up classes in programming languages and competitive programming too. You have no idea how you can extensively grow your knowledge, skills, and overall understanding of everything.
