What is Competitive Coding? Is it a Waste of time?

Competitive Coding

Competitive Coding is when the participants are given a set of instructions and asked to write code that fulfils the requirements in as few moves as possible.

In the past competitive programming has been called coding war, since in these competitions, you were often competing with other developers and trying to find the shortest solution to a problem. You don’t have to be a developer, you can be a writer, artist, scientist, mechanic or anything in between.

Coding is simply writing instructions that machines, like a computer, can read and perform an action. A Coder (a programmer) writes commands that a machine executes merely and acts accordingly. This writing command is a High-Level language that humans can understand but a computer cannot.

For example C, C++, Java, Python, etc. These are then executed on a compiler to convert it into Machine Language, a low-level language and the only machine that can understand it. To solve a problem on the computer, we need to do coding for it. And the practice of it is known as Programming, like C Programming or C++ Programming.

Now coming to Competitive Coding it’s a sport where great thinking and analytical skill are required to solve a problem within a given time. Like a cricket or football match, a team play to either win or lose or draw; similarly, Competitive Coding is played either solo or in a team.

It’s not a waste of time; You get to learn many more things. These are Critical Thinking, Logical Thinking, Optimization, Time Constraints, Various Algorithms, etc. The main goal of competitive coding is “To prepare a programmer such that his/her logical ability increases and he/she can write code for the challenging situation.”

Being programming, you come to see various challenges and encounter even problems that no one has ever solved before.

Another reason for doing Competitive Coding is getting a job at Big Tech Giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. If you want to get into these Top Companies, you should start doing Competitive Coding. Every Year, Google does Coding Contest and offer Job and Price to the Top Rankers.

How to start doing Competitive Coding?

 To become a master in this, just follow these simple steps:

• Choose your favourite programming language. It could be any, but it would be best if you go with C++ or Java, because they have faster execution times and also large libraries.
• Learn data structures and algorithms as it’s very necessary to grasp the concepts for solving fundamental problems.
• Participate in various coding contests and always give a try to every question. It may be difficult at first, but you will come to learn various tricks and knowledge.
• Always take care of Time and Space Complexity, as it could create a large difference while solving a problem.