Tips for all the programmers out there:

- A programmer is not a PC repair man, just no one seems to remember about that

- Programming is thinking, not typing.
Counting starts from zero, not one.

- Even after completing a degree and courses and working on IT projects, learning never stops. If you want to stay competitive you should also work on personal projects that force you to use languages and software you never work with on the job.

- You don’t need serious math skills to be a developer. However, you’ll need basic algebra, logic, strong problem-solving skills, and most of all, patience.
- You don’t need a degree to be a developer - programming is like almost any profession: if you’re good at it, people will pay you for your skills, regardless of how you got there.

- Sleeping with a problem, can actually solve it.

I met my girlfriend due to code.

There were these free courses for competitive programming as a preparation for the informatics olympiad and we got along and made weird programs and had a great time. Most of the other people there were much younger than us, and in the actual finals she ended up beating me by quite a bit, yet she still dares to say I am a better programmer.

It's been almost a year since then. Wow

I was 15 years old and the first year of high school. Everything was new to me and I was such a newbie. At that time I had 2-3 year of programming behind me at an institution where they taught competitive programming. And I knew something about computers. Not much but more than most of my school mates. At that time I wanted to become "super cool hacker".

So we had this very very thought teacher for history which was also our form master. She really knows how to explained everything about history and in an interesting way. But while she was teaching we also had to write down notes from her powerpoints that were on a projector. And occasionally she would wait for us to copy everything and then move on with her lecture. But sometimes she didn't. This was frustrating as hell. The whole class would complain about this because you couldn't take notes down normal, you had to do it at double speed.

But she got one weak spot. She was not very good with computers. Our school computers were locked in some kinda closet so that students didn't have physical access to a computer and were also password protected. So I came up with the plan to plant wireless mouse in her computer so that I could control her mouse. At that time it seemed like SUPER HACKER MASTER PLAN.

So I got an opportunity one time when she left the classroom and let closet where the computer was open. I quickly sneaked the USB of the wireless mouse in the computer and then go back to the seat.

So THE FUN began.

Firstly I would only go back in powerpoint so that all my schoolmates could write down notes including me. And it was hilarious to watch when she didn't know what is happening. So then I would move her mouse when she tried to close some window. I would just move it slightly so she wouldn't notice that somebody else is controlling mouse. And by missing X button just by slight she would click other things and other things would pop up and now she had to close this thing so it became a nightmare for her. And she would become angry at the mouse and start complaining how the computer doesn't work and that mouse doesn't obey her.

One time when she didn't pay attention to her computer and projector I went to paint program and drew a heart and wrote we love you (In Slovenian Imamo vas radi -> See the picture below) and one of my school mates has the picture of it. We were all giggling and she didn't know what is was for. And I managed to close everything before she even noticed.

So it got to the point where she couldn't hand it more so she called our school IT guy so that he would check her computer (2 or 3 weeks passed before she called IT guy). And he didn't find anything. He was really crappy IT guy in general. So one week passed by and I still had messed with her mouse. So she got a replacement computer. Who would guessed all the problems went away (because I didn't have another mouse like that). I guess when our IT guy took the computer to his room and really thoroughly check it he found my USB.

So he told her what was the problem she was so pissed off really I didn't see her pissed off so much in all my 4 years in high school. She demanded the apology from whom did it. And at that moment my mind went through all possible scenarios... And the most likely one was that I was going to be expelled... And I didn't have the balls to say that I did it and I was too afraid... Thanks to God nobody from my school mates didn't tell that it was me.

While she waited that somebody would come forward there was one moment when our looks met and at that moment both of us knew that I was the one that did it.

Next day the whole class wrote the apology letter and she accepted it. But for the rest of 4 years whenever was there a problem with the computer I had to fixed it and she didn't trust anybody not even our IT guy at school. It was our unwritten contract that I would repair her computer to pay off my sin that I did. And she once even trusted me with her personal laptop.

So to end this story I have really high respect for her because she is a great teacher and great persons that guide me through my teen years. And we stayed in contact.

The first time I submitted it it was 40 ms. I was sad because of the slowness and I kept trying to improve it until I finally did it.

Just sharing my experience of my spontaneous interview with Facebook. I'm not good at writing these but here you go :)

- I was working as an Android dev and didn't have much knowledge in algorithms nor competitive programming, never ever interviewed with big companies.
- a random day on LinkedIn, a recruiter from Facebook contacted me
- I ignored it for few week because I thought it's so out of my league, then somehow, out of blue, I had a thought of giving it a try, so I did
- passed first round
- start studying algorithms a little for phone interview in 3 weeks
- recklessly took the phone interview
- passed
- start studying intensively (while working fulltime) for the on-site interview in 2 months
- almost got the job, they gave me one more chance by a followed up interview
- messed up the last chance real bad
- failed!!!
- Initially I just wanted to give it a try, but the fact that I failed at very very last chance, frankly, bothers me a bit. Maybe I will interview with FB or big companies if I have chance later, but I know for sure that the studying had made me a much better dev. All the code I write now is much more efficient (I think), I can and not anymore afraid of reading complicated code.
- Overall, it does takes a lot of time (~4 months studying while working fulltime), but also benefits myself a lot though I didn't get the job, so basically, good experience, but better if I got the job 😁

Oops, wanted to write a few lines and it's a long post already.. I should stop here :D

I competed in two competitions Computer Security and C++ Programming and I got 6th in Security and 1st in C++!!

Friend: I want to start competitive programming. What should I to ?
Me: You should know at least one programming language like C++ or java ...
Friend: No problem, I know HTML ....
Finally Me: Oh God save me..

That feeling when you solved a data structure problem that bugs you for 3 days.

Pure orgasm.

When you really aren't that good at competitive programming, but get invited to a week+ - long fully paid for programmer camp in another country because everyone else is even more shit 😊

This is my definition of happiness.
Accepted!

For the first two year of my engineering I believed having a good developer profile will land you in top companies(eg FAANG).

Later I realised doing competitive coding will help you to get in those companies.

But at the end I saw one of my friend getting into those companies by only doing specific type questions that are usually asked in these companies.

Moral of the story - Just by practicing some specific question from some premium website(eg leetcode), you could easily get into your dream company.

PS- I was not selected in any of these giant companies and later on took an internship in some start up which was again a tragedy for me.

So today I started to learn PHP & SQL for a team web development competition where we have until January to build a functioning website and showcase it to the judges! It's a little stressful but wish me luck because I'll need it..

University Final Viva for OOP with C++
(Yeah, that first line is a rant in itself for the likes of me and Mr. Torvalds)
Assistant Professor:
Tell me a few "functions" in C++ STL algorithm header
Me:
*starts off with the first one that came to my mind*
sort()
AP: Huh? a I'm asking the Algorithms in C++ STL
Me: Yes, this is one of them Ma'am.
She looked at me as if I told her that I'm dating her daughter. It became clear she doesn't know about it and she'll gladly deduct my marks for getting it wrong. So I explained how Sort() is a hybrid of quicksort, heap sort and insertion sort. (Read about it an hour ago while doing a competitive programming question)
AP: Tell me the ones we did in class.
I haven't attended those classes, so I just told her the ones I knew.

After a couple more infuriating questions, which themselves sounded right from a book published in the 90's, she gave me 10/15.

This is what's wrong with India's Education system, even the teachers know only the stuff mentioned in the course hand-outs. Forget brownie points, you get screwed over by the teachers for actually knowing stuff and using it.

How I got selected for GSoC'19:
I will describe my journey from detail i.e from the 1st year of the college. I joined my college back in 2017 (July), I was not even aware of Computer Science. What are the different languages of CS, but I had a strong intuition of doing BTech from CSE only?

So yeah I was totally unaware of the computer science stuff, but I had a strong desire to learn it and I literally don’t know why I had this desire. After getting into college, I was learning HTML, Python, and C, also I am really thankful to my friends who really helped me to learn, building logic and making stuff out of it. During the 1st month of joining the college, I got to know what is Open Source, GSoC, Github due to my helpful seniors. But I was not into Open Source during my 1st year of college as I thought it is very difficult to start. In my 1st year, I used to do competitive programming and writing scripts in Python to automate various stuff. I never thought that I would even start doing Open Source development, also in the summer vacations after the 1st year I used to practice programming on HackerRank and learnt an awesome course called Automate the Boring Stuff with Python(which I think is one of the most popular courses for Python) which really helped me to build by Python skills.

Now the 2nd year came, I was totally confused between doing Open Source development or continue with my Competitive programming. But I wanted to know about Open Source development, so I thought to start now will be a good idea. I started attending meetups of OSDC(Open Source Developers Club) which is a hub of my college, which really helped me to know more about Open Source development from my seniors. I started looking for beginner friendly projects in Python on the website Up For Grabs, it’s really helpful for the beginners. So I contributed in a few of them, and in starting it was really tough for me but yeah I continued, which really helped me to at least dive into Open Source. Now I thought to start contributing in any bigger project, which has millions of lines of code which will be really interesting. So I started looking for the project, as I was into web development those days so I thought to find a project which matches my domain. So yeah I finally landed on Oppia:
Oppia

I started contributing into Oppia in November, so yeah in starting it was really difficult for me to solve any issue (as I wasn’t aware of the codebase which was really big), but yeah mentors at Oppia are really helpful, they guided me which really helped me to start my journey with Oppia. By starting of January I was able to resolve around 3–4 issues, which helped me to become the collaborator at Oppia, afterward I really liked contributing to it and I was able to resolve around 9–10 issues by the end of February, which landed me to become a Team Member at Oppia which was really a confidence boost and indication for me that I am in the right direction.

Also in February, the GSoC organizations list was out, and yeah Oppia was also participating in it. The project ideas of Oppia were really interesting, I became even confused to pick anyone because there were 4–5 ideas which seemed interesting to me. After 1–2 days of thought process I decided to go for one of them, i.e “Asking students why they picked a particular answer”, a full stack project.

I started making proposals on it, from the first week of March. I used to get my proposal reviewed frequently from the mentors, which really helped me to build a good and strong proposal.

I must say a well-defined proposal is the most important key for getting selected in GSoC, also you must have done some contributions to the organization earlier which I think really maximize your chances of selection in GSoC.

So after my proposal was made, I submitted it on the GSoC website.
Result Day:

It was the result day, by the way, I had the confidence of being selected, but yeah I was a little bit nervous. All my friends were asking when is your result coming, I told them it will come at 12.30AM (IST). Finally, the time came when I refreshed the GSoC website, Voila the results were out. I opened the Oppia organization page, and yeah my name was there. That was the day I was really happy and satisfied, I was thinking like I have achieved something in my life. It was a moment of pleasure for me, I called my parents and told them my result, they were really happy for me.

I say cracking GSoC is worth it, the preparation you do, the contributions you do, the making of the proposal is really worth.

I got so many messages from my juniors, friends, and seniors, they congratulated me. After that when I uploaded my result of Facebook and LinkedIn, there were tons of comments and likes on the post. So yeah that’s my journey.

By the way, I am writing this post after really late, sorry for it. I must have done it earlier, but due to milestone 1 of GSoC, I was busy.

I haven't really known what to post. But I've decided not to care about being relevant or care about the like count. I'm a very competitive person so things like like count tend to effect the way I see the quality of a post.

I want devRant to be a place where I can be honest and feel safe even if I don't get the validation I sometimes wish I had. And hey maybe someone will think my opinions or thoughts are interesting.

So let's start with a little about me. I'm a 17 year old kid that loves programming. I work full time as a full stack web developer and I'm really the only web person. The current system is built on WordPress because of fucking course it is. I don't like it but I gotta keep it user friendly for less techy people to manage. No one likes have all minor changes and tweaks having to go through one person when they could do it themselves. So I manage.

I'd say my passion is more backend development but I do love having a pretty UI to display the results.

I've struggled with mental health the past few years but I'm doing much better. Even just last week I had an anxiety attack during a social event. I came here for the community and I do enjoy it, but I'm gonna try to make it an outlet. My best friend went off to university and I don't really have any IRL friends I can just be me around.

I don't have anything special to say. But if you read this thank you for listening to some random kid on the internet. I hope you have a great day.

HackerEarth on High Weed

Stop sucking at competitive programming
Learn Android development with kotlin
Learn machine learning and apply it

So,
Yesterday was Google CodeJam's Kickstart event ( or something like that ).
Participated in competitive programming for the first time. It was kinda fun I guess...
Nope I still hate competitive programming. I like being a laid back programmer who develops in his own pace.
I know it's not what industry wants but I can't jst go for competitive programming.

On the positive note, I started using goto in C++ because of it and created a better Graph library than I had before 🤗🤗

P.S. I did read on how to use goto and when to not use it. I guess my usage was fine... Or better yet, IT WORKED 😜😂

Well, I am done as far as competitive programming goes... 😭😭

Thoughts on Competitive Programming??

Fellow Deviants, I need your help in understanding the importance of C++

Okay, I need to clarify a few things:

I am not a beginner or a newbie who has just entered this community...

I have been using C++ for some time and in fact, it was the language which introduced me to the world of programming... Before, I switched to Java, since I found it much better for application development...

I already know about the obvious arguments given in favour of C/C++ like how it is a much more faster and memory efficient than other languages...

But, at the same time, C/C++ exposes us and doesn't protect us from ourselves.. I hope that you understand what I mean to say..

And, I guess that it is a fair tradeoff for the kind of power and control that these languages (C/C++) provide us..

And, I also agree with the fact that it is an language that ideally suits our need, if we wish to deal with compilers, graphics, OS, etc, in the future...

But, what I really want to ask here is:

In this age and times, when hardware has advanced so much, where technically, memory efficiency or execution speeds no longer is the topmost priority... These were the reasons for which C/C++ was initially created...

In today's time, human concept of time matters more and hence, syntactical less complicated languages like Java or Python are much more preferred, especially for domains like application development or data sciences...

So, is continuing with C++, an endeavour worth sticking with in the future or is it not required...

I am talking about this issue since I am in a dilemma about the use of C++ in the future...

I would be grateful if we could talk about keeping AI, Machine Learning or Algorithms Optimisation in mind... Since, these are the fields in which I am interested in...

I know that my question could have been posted in a better way.. But, considering the chaos that is present in my mind, regarding this question doesn't allow me to do so...

Any kind of suggestion or thoughts would be welcome and much appreciated...

P.S: I currently use C++ only for competitive programming or challenges...

Should is start competitive programming? Does it improve your coding and algorithm skills? Which websites would you recommend for a beginner?

Is anybody here doing competitive programming?

Preparing and practicing for my first programming competition! I'm nervous and excited..

The most shittiest feeling in competitive programming is when your code passes all the test cases except the last three. 🤓😌

It's an irony in my case. Python is so simple and fast to implement that I end up doing all my projects ( web dev, ML, crawlers, etc.) But still I can't use Python for solving competitive programming. Python seems unknown if I don't have access to google. Way to go to learn Python. Though able to think Pythonic nowadays.. ;p

Does anyone have a good (preferably funny) name for a competitive programming team?

I was thinking "it compiles; submit it" but that is slightly unoriginal...

Competitive programming should be encouraged that is the best way to develope and improve logical skills

Well it’s Sunday so last day to leave my thoughts on probably the only topic that’s current to me.

I think you should pay teachers a competitive salary.
The problem with teaching CS at high school level especially (in university there are grants, actually competitive salaries between unis and other perks) is if a person is versed in programming/cs theory why would they settle for a $40k job? When the alternative is finding a job in the field where salaries are around $80k+ (this figure came from my head, can’t remember the source) it’s hard to justify going into teaching even if you would enjoy it more than a desk job.

If the salary difference was smaller then one could maybe justify liking work over pay but here it’s basically double difference... Kinda makes you understand why some comp sci teachers seem incompetent in even using their own computer. Yes there will always be that odd person out who will teach (or go to a private school and negotiate a workable salary) but until education becomes a priority for government salaries there will be very limited progress, if any.

You can do anything to the syllabus, make it more verbose, make it appeal to the lowest common denominator, but if you can’t find people to teach it (and know it themselves) you are really screwed.

Damn. I am so blessed to have friends that i have. 90% of them don't even care if you live or die (60% of them would be the first to throw me in fire if that's benefitting to them) remaining 10% would be someone that slightly care, but will move on pretty quickly.

But the best thing about 1 of them is that he is bluntly honest , and willing to share his opinion.
Today we were just talking about stuff when i see this placement offer in my mail.

I have been recently feeling bad about my grades, my choice of persuing android , my choice of leaving out many other techs (like web dev or data sciences , whose jobs are coming in so much number in our college) and data structures, and my fear of not getting a good career start.

This guy is also like me in some aspects. He is also not doing any extreme level competitive programming. He doesn't even know android , web dev, ai/ml or other buzz words. He is just good in college subjects. But the fascinating thing about him,is that he is so calm about all of this! I am losing my nuts everyday my month of graduation , aug2020 is coming . And he is so peaceful about this??

So i tried discussing this issue with him .Let me share a few of his points. Note that we both are lower middle class family children in an awful, no opportunity college.

He : "You know i feel myself to be better than most of our classmates. When i see around , i don't see even 10 of them taking studies seriously. Everyone is here because of the opportunity. I... Love computer science. I never keep myself free at home. I like to learn about how stuff works, these networking, the router, i really like to learn."

"That's why i dont fear. Whatever the worst happens , i have a believe that i will get some job. Maybe later, maybe later than all of you , but i will. Its not a problem."

me: "but you are not doing anything bro! I am not doing anything ! So what if our college mates suck , Everyone out there is pulling their hairs out learning data structures, Blockchain, ai ml , hell of shit. But we are not! Why aren't you scared bro? Remember the goldman sach test you gave ? You were never able to solve beyond one question. How did you feel man? And didn't you thought maybe if i gave a year to that , i will be good enough? Don't you too want a good package bro? Everyone's getting placed at good numbers."

Him : "Again, its your thoughts that i am not doing things. I am happy learning at my own pace. Its my belief that i should be learning about networking and how hardware works first , then only its okay to learn about programming and ai ml stuff. I am not going to feel scared and start learning multiple things that i don't even wanna learn now."

"My point is whatever i am doing now, if its related to computers , then someday its gonna help me.
And i am learning ds too , very less at a time. Ds algo are things for people with extreme knowledge. We could have cleared goldman sachs if we had started learning all this stuff from 1st year, spend 2-3 years in it and then maybe we could have solved 2 -3 questions. I regret that a little, but no one told us that we should be doing this."

"And if i tell you my honest thoughts now, you ar better off without it. You are the only guy among us with good knowledge of android , you have been doing that for last 2 years. Maybe you will get better opportunity with android then with ds/algo."

"You know when i felt happy? When we gave our first placement test at sopra. I was thinking of going there all dumb. But at 11 am in night i casually told my brother about this ,and he said that its a good company. So i started studying a little and next day i sat for placement. And i could not believe myself when they told me that am selected. I was shit scared that night, when my dad came and said " you don't even want that job. Be happy that you passed it on your own". And then i slept peacefully that night and gave the most awesome interview the next day."

"Thus now i am confident that wherever my level of skills are, it is enough to get into a job . Maybe not the goldman sachs ,but i will do well enough with a smaller job too."

"Bro you don't even know... All my school mates are getting packages of 8LPA, 15LPA, 35LPA. You see they are getting that because they already won a race. They are all in better colleges and companies which come there, they will take them no matter what (because those companies want to associate themselves with their college tags). But if worst comes to worst, i won't be worried even if i have to go take 4lpa as job offer in sopra"

Damn you Aman Gupta. Love you from all my heart. Thanks for calming me down and making me realise that its okay to be average

How can I start and become good at competitive programming? Can you suggest me some ideas?

So there's this coding competition called "Code Quest" hosted by Lockheed Martin. The rules state that for each team you can have one computer for coding solutions for the problems that the provide. ONE computer I feel is very restrictive and I wonder if my two teammates are going to the bulk of the work.

I love this wk108 tag. Have a lot of stories related to it.
For me , my mentors are the reason i am what i am today. In this crazy selfish world where people only want to run faster than the others, having nice helping people around is great.
(Val titanLannister=xx)

(1)class 6-10th, xx is a curious, but poor boy with no desktop/mobile , but still loves cs classes due to various ,caring teachers.
(2) class 11th end,programming for the first time that year, hates programming, one day when everybody goes out for lunch, xx tears down while talking to his cs teacher "why can't i score good marks when i was the best till 10th? Is programming so tough?" . I remember him giving me a little but greatest motivational lecture followed by 40 minutes of the most basic concepts in which i might had asked him a 1000 questions. "You are my chaempion", he used to say😂 (bad accent) . But god, if he hadn't motivated me that day, i swear i would have left all this and go for business. Thank-you, lokesh sir💗💗

First year : tried to go for a competitive learning course. Mann, am not cool in that stuff. Again was about to break (i was among the top scorers in school boards and had designed many small games back then. I should have been good here too, but nah... the other guys were like bullets .)
Oh my, my deepest bow to this amazing teacher SUMEET MALIK (oh sir, you were so good) .
How this guy taught? Well, he first explained the concept. Fo those who understood, he gave them question 'A', for those who didn't, he repated . For those who understood , can do question a again, and those eho did A already gets an even advance question B. And this cycle went on until the weakest student(usually me) understood the concept.
And no, it never happened even once that class finished with even a single child not doing all questions he gave.he used to teach very less concepts each class and would go to everybody's desk to check they understood the concept, the question, its working, weather we implemented or not and weather our implementation is correct or not +our doubts. Hell , i even took doubts with him for hours after the class and he always just smiled💗(oh sir, am so sorry for being so dumb)
Real Doubt classes, doubts on whatsApp, revision assignments , tests , competitions,... damn, i haven't seen a teacher with this much dedication. At one point of time, that institution was famous for our Sumeet sir's classes 😂

Then last year, i got another mentor . Harshit bhiya. The guy is awesome, and a little extra swaggy 😂. He got a lot of chill, with his big AAD badge, a bag full of stickers and his every day association with people at udacity and google. As always i tried to overwhelm him with my ton of doubts in class, but he use to just give me a few pointers/links, after which i was like quiet for the complete session😂. He gave me a lot to think/work upon and i got a kind of career to work on.

I also think of mentioning a fucked up depressing-bot assholic friend of mine, but he don't deserve to be in this list of my best people. Just fuck you mann with a blockchain of dicks, if you are reading this.

Overall, pretty good actually compared to the alternatives, which is why there's so much competition for dev jobs.

On the nastier end of things you have the outsourcing pools, companies which regularly try to outbid each other to get a contract from an external (usually foreign) company at the lowest price possible. These folks are underpaid and overworked with absolutely terrible work culture, but there are many, many worse things they could be doing in terms of effort vs monetary return (personal experience: equally experienced animator has more work and is paid less). And forget everything about focus on quality and personal development, these companies are here to make quick money by just somehow doing what the client wants, I'm guessing quite a few of you have experienced that :p

Startups are a mixed bag, like they are pretty much everywhere in the world. You have the income tax fronts which have zero work, the slave driver bossman ones, the dumpster fires; but also really good ones with secure funding, nice management, and cool work culture (and cool work, some of my friends work at robotics startups and they do some pretty heavy shit).

Government agencies are also a mixed bag, they're secure with low-ish pay but usually don't have much or very exciting work, and the stuff they turn out is usually sub-par because of bad management and no drive from higher-ups.

Big corporates are pretty cool, they pay very well, have meaningful(?) work, and good work culture, and they're better managed in general than the other categories. A lot of people aim for these because of the pay, stability, networking, and resume building. Some people also use them as stepping stones to apply for courses abroad.

Research work is pretty disappointing overall, the projects here usually lack some combination of funding, facilities, and ambition; but occasionally you come across people doing really cool stuff so eh.

There's a fair amount of competition for all of these categories, so students spend an inordinate amount of time on stuff like competitive programming which a lot of companies use for hiring because of the volume of candidates.

All this is from my experience and my friends', YMMV.

What do you guys think about competitive programming, how does it impacts your programming in the long run?
I feel depressed when I take more than enough time to complete a competitive programming challenge marked as "Easy". 😥

That moment when you directly submit the code and pass all test cases in the first try.

Win me a Competitive Programming Contest :D

Oh wait never going to happen

Competed in my first Competitive Coding contest on Codeforces. I could barely solve 1 question, and even in that I couldn’t got error in some pretexts. Still I was satisfied that I got the algorithm right.

But how the fuck are the top coders reading the problem and submitting the solution within 3 minutes !

I want to be a Dev. But only thing i know is competitive programming (using c++) 🙁

When you gotta sleep rn to wake up for college tomorrow but you've got a competitive programming problem stuck in your mind that just refuse to go away.

Someone sing me a fucking lullaby pls...

Tying to make something of myself without working for anyone else.

It used to be easy for me, but fear kept me from perusing things all the way thru when I was younger. I never wanted to leave what were decent jobs at the time.

I finally did it. Threw away a very good job to bet on myself.

But the difference is, now I have a family and finding free time in itself isn’t that hard, but finding free time to code uninterrupted for hours... the way one needs to in order to hold a program in ones mind... yeah, near impossible these days, haha.

I have great ideas but I need help to get things to that ‘next level’ where an idea could take off and get real investments. And I need money to pay the help... Just getting the ball rolling would be nice. I used to take it for granted how easily I could get side jobs and be literally the best in town. But now it’s insanely competitive. I don’t even consider Webdesign an option for side work anymore, with sites like Wix and customers that don’t appreciate what I do vs a kid that gives them a Wordpress theme for just the cost of dirt cheap hosting... traditional Webdesign is dead.

But that’s all well and good, i saw that coming over a decade ago and focused more on coding application. I do think there’s a niche for my programming skills, so my current goal is trying to exploit that, or at least see if it’s viable. I just need something to get money to invest in my real projects.

I’d love to hear from people with similar situations! Not sure if I’ll pull it off before I have to go back to work. Although, I viewed never returning to the workforce haha. We’ll see...

I hear a lot that doing competitive programming is important to land jobs and that it would improve your ability to solve problems, however; I hate it and I suck at it so much. I don't see improvement except for knowing how to solve a certain problem and I forget about it after some time.

I can't stand doing any kind of abstract, unrealistic problem solving for whatever reason. I love solving real-world problems that actually matter and provide an actual value on the other hand.

Is interview preparation and competitive programming the same thing? If they are different which one should one focus on?
🤔🤔🤔

Does it ever happen to you that, you are solving some competitive programming question, and you are thinking way deep and it's all in your mind. For some reason you put some codition or do something and solution gets accepted! You are on cloud 9 but at the same time you can't put you thinking on paper or you can't explain why you did what you did. Jeez it happens to me a lot! And I can't come up with a test case to explain it but it's there in my mind.

I just learned C and I have created some projects like Parking System and Library Management System. My problem is I don't know mathematics and I want to learn DataStructures & Algorithms and become pro in it. In the whole September I will still be focusing on C and create more projects. I have started learning Mathematics today from High School level to College level. I thik maths will take 1 year to complete. After September in the October I want to start learning C++ and finish C++ till the end of Dec 2019. I want to know that do I have to first finish my maths learning which will take 1 year then I should start learning Data Structures and Algorithms? As I said I want to become a professional in Algorithms. I think its not possible to learn DS&A yet I have to wait 1 year till I finish learning my Maths. I can't do more with C & C++ without knwoing DS&A? If I started learning DS&A with C++ in the future then I can't become good at algorithms? I want to do competitive programming and be at Top 1 of Hacker Rank and other sites like this.

What is your opinion on Competitive Programming. Are you against, for or in the middle and why?

How can I balance competitive programming and developing as well?

You try and try and try. Its just get frustating sometimes. Not seeing some real growth in your competitive programming skills.

Started with Codeforces. Some solutions in Python exceeded time limit at test #25. Wrote the same code in C++ but this time it exceeded time limit in test #33.

What’s the solution to this ? Replacing cin/cout with scanf/printf doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.

What do you guys think which is the best site for competitive programming?

Hey developer community.
Need to ask you all something.
Do you consider "To be good at competitive programming" or even experienced at that, with some kind of benefit in your fields ? Maybe even that can help in getting job interviews which are rather difficult to score by applying online. Just need y'all two cents. :)

I am new to c and cpp.
I used to exploit my college's competitive programming platform cus it had a bad architecture and almost no auth checks.
For every ajax request, they weren't sending auth tokens or any form of identification and ran all the programs without any logs and on the main thread and as root.. wtf, right?
But recently they've changed something to the site and I cannot run bash commands using system() call.
Is there any other way to execute bash commands using c and cpp.
I already configured a miner in their server but then they re-deployed it cos someone forked bomb the shit out of it.
I'm a noob in c and cpp btw!

To competive programmers out there... What if there was an inbuilt browser in vs code, and some shortcuts to run terminal commands ?

when recruiters don't count competitive programming as any value.

I have been coding exclusively in Python on competitive programming websites. So far I haven't faced any issues w.r.t timing. Is it worth switching to c/c++?

i am a B.Tech 3rd year student.Last month i started learning Php web development,also learnt HTML &CSS.
i struggled during the starting days but became quite comfortable with back-end development using Php,MySQLi, and JS.
But my concern is my Placements. I have seen students getting hired by top IT companies on the basis of their ranking in COMPETITIVE PROGRAMMING like codechef,hakerrank etc.
My question is that should i continue doing Web Development or should i invest time in competitive programming and stop doing web development?

Can anyone help me please?

I am in 7th semester pursuing B.Tech in Computer Science but haven't done any internship and not much familiar with the data structures and algorithm, but beside that I have done more than 40 freelancing projects, certified Redhat system administrator, put a course on Udemy about WordPress and wrote 2 books.
The problem is I am confused whether I should pursue M. Tech or not or should I start competitive programming for the placement in next semester or prepare for internship in the next semester. I am confused between all of these things.

How will I get a better Dev job in 12 months, by making projects or by practicing competitive programming?

DEVIANTS!! NEED ADVICE...

I have been focusing on learning and implementing data structures and algorithms through participating in competitive programming sites...

Whenever I face an issue and struggle to find an answer (which is more often than not), I ask the forum about the fundamental principles involved in the question...

I avoid looking at the solution, as much as possible.. And, when I do look at them, I still question the author of the code about the reasoning behind a particular section of code which I don't understand...

I don't wish to copy and paste code, but sometimes, I wait for days on end, but I don't use the code until I receive an answer...

Is this the right way or are there any other way which I could implement to strengthen my algorithmic thinking??

I am starting to teach competitive programming in my college. And now I am tired of people asking me if they should bring their laptop or not. I mean seriously. I wrote pdfs on tutorial and notes for them and they are like laptops are heavy.
And I am getting irritating at questions like first class if we will be doing something important in first class or not.
How can I say if it will be important or not. It depends on how good you already are in competitive programming and CS concepts.
I upload every pdf for class on githubs and shared it. Why don't you just check it for yourself.
Damn irritated.

Competitive Programming

Why is Python still frowned upon in Competitive Programming? Like yes it's allowed, but why do we have such a huge stigma against it?

Do you guys know of any online course that teaches data structures, algorithms and other competitive stuff, but which is like, semi-online :
- the course would run for ,say 3 months
- the instructor would add videos/livestream on a specific day/days and give the assignment questions/tests
- assignment questions/tests are expected to be completed before the next video, where these questions , along with new concepts are discussed?

I hate those udacity/udemy courses where you have a large playlist of videos open up as you pay. It makes me loose half of my motivation since i know i can watch them later and end up watching them never. Plus there is no competition to motivate

I want this as my job does not allows me to stay sharp in competitive programming and it would be nice to remain in touch with that( without being too much stressed about it).

I am feeling a lot doubtful right now.

I am an average undergrad student who has been dedicating efforts in java/Android for most of my college life.

As of now i have decent command over java , launched 2 simple apps on playstore, worked as an android dev intern in 3 companies and make decent medium complexity apps. I will say i am 40-60% down the path of an expert native Android dev.

However apart from Android, am dumb as a stick. I know shit about ai,ml, web dev, js , react, hybrid stuff, and am not very good with competitive programming and system topics ( os, Algorithms, networking, etc)

So this closes a lot of doors for me. I can't apply to some top tier companies as they would either want expert competitive skills or expert Android dev skills.
I had bad experiences with startups which are usually willing take rejected students like me for the post of a droid dev... there is usually low packages , high pressure, and treatment like a slave

So i am very unsure what to do next. I have tried to learn web dev/ ai-ml-data sciences. They are not very interesting to me, but again, what is interest really :/

What should be my focus now?
A) I could be learning competitive and other interview related topics so that i could crack interviews of top companies , and later try to get a position of android developer there.

B) i could focus on become better in Android and start learning things that i don't know like rx, kotlin, etc. I could then hope to crack interview of medium sized app dev companies which would mainly focus on my android knowledge in their interviews

C) i could increase my skill set and learn web dev or ai/ml topics to increase my recruiter pool. It would be like option B, but i will have more medium sized companies willing to take me.

Currently i am in a shit storm. I am about to go into a mass recruiter company in which i have heard would be doing more or less data entry work

Writing--
public static void main(String args[ ] ) all the time (in every program)....during competitive programming questions.... :/
I get the meaning but still....just look at c or py...:/

New year, new Google HashCode!!!

I need a new stupid name for my team, last year "SicroMoft" by @Fast-Nop was great, but this time I need something even better (or worse)

Also, who else is participating?

A CodeForces rated educational round. Now I’ve seen it all.

Hi So I need some solid advice from you all wonderful people.
I think i am now ready to look into job side of this world, but have lots of doubts , read my story.
I have been learning android for last 2 years. Most of the time i have been trying to understand how stuff works in android , but i have also gained a few other skills ( python programming, kotlin/flutter basics data analysis basics, testing, some graphic designing, aweful web dev ,etc). But i really want to work with Android. I don't have any specific Salary figure in mind, but i guess my knowledge is better or atleast par with most of the good android developers.

So i want to know how is this fresher/placement thingy work?
1.) GETTING KNOWN? : How can i make some good android based company aware that I am available for hiring? Should i start emailing every android related company that i know of? Should i start listing my profile on recruitment sites like linkedin or internshala? This year it is being said that companies will come for placements. From the status of my college, they are going to give me way to less $ , nd i know am not going to like any of them, but i guess i have to sit for them too.

2.INTERVIEW OR DIRECT PLACEMENTS? A little pre-context: i am currently starting my 4th year in clg. Afaik , 4th year isnt that strict and their can be leniency in terms of attendance. But my college is a place full of political cun*s in the name of directors and HODs and I don't know if they are again going to enforce the old 75% mandatory criteria. Plus if the company is from a different state/country , then my attendance would definitely not suffice.
So mainly i am unsure if somehow a company hires me, i would be able to start immediately. I heard that there are interviews for job recruitment after which the candidate is binded with an agreement to do some months training followed by permanent working after college completion.
This type of agreement is very much suitable for me, since from what my friend tells me, trainings can be lenient and understanding regarding exam preparations nd stuff.

So what do company usually chooses? Binding a fresher on immediate working basis or do they consider graduate completion?

Also, i suck at competitive coding. Do i need to polish myself on that or some company is willing to give me chance on the basis of my other skills 🙈(okay, no kidding , that's a serious question. I need to either work on getting better in competitive or build more apps based on that)

3.) ANDROID OR EVERYTHING? From what i have heard, working as a professional fresher is more like being an allrounder than being a domain specialist. But as i already stated, i really dig android and that's no small framework. I may di other stuff too, but won't interest me nd my output might be less efficient than expected.
So freshers can really be asked to do any stuff? Or can i still be in the area i like being into?

4.) COMPANY OR START-UP? Yeah, this is a general debate starter. Ignoring the business side of the conversation ( job safety vs more salary, experience, etc) the thing that's most important for me is the presence of a team. I want someone to assign me a task, whose vision i could follow, from whom i could learn, and some other people who are supportive and doing the same amount / similar work that am doing . This is so much import8 for me that i can easily ignore other factors for a better team. I once took a call from a startup ceo who hired me, a 2 month old android beginner at that time, as the "lead android developer"
But if am being on a team where i am supposed to do any random stuff that is assigned, then obviously this whole point of "visionary, helpful leader, guiding team, "etc goes moot

Anyone on here been to IOI 2016?

Let's see how many copetitive programmers we have here on devRant :)