Recently I realised that my job is mostly related to exploring frameworks and calling different APIs in multiple programming languages. I am not saying that there is no challenge involved. Interesting is to learn business domain and map the requirement to technical problem. However I think this cannot go on forever. :)) So, I decided to spice up my relationship with Computer Science by doing competitive programming. Do you think this can help at interviews? Severals things like getting interview calls, offer are not in my hands. At least, I could keep on giving my efforts and improve my problem solving skills. Did any of you get benefit by doing CP? If you could share your experience that would be really great. Thanks!
People who are regular competitive programmers can breeze through the leetcode mediums and in most cases the hard ones too.
The best ones memorize solutions. Line by line. I've seen people on YouTube type up full solutions by the time I finish reading the question.
saying the best competitive programmers memorize solutions is like saying the best mathematicians memorize the multiplication table. Yes, they do memorize djikstras, unionfind, etc; however that is only because rhe problems they are solving are so much more complex than a single algorithm alone that they become second nature to them naturally.
If your sole goal is getting good at interviews, just do interview problems. If you’re really good at competitive programming, interview problems become easy, but it’s way more effort than just grinding leetcode.
CP is not about entire computer science, only DSA. No need of understanding networks, OS, distributed systems, concurrency, databases etc.
Man man. This is crazy.
Have you considered making a friend or two
Will help. Better still try to build some products and launch and try to grow them. Will teach you lot more.
Great idea. But it needs huge motivation, especially when there is no deadline. No users.
The way i approach it is from angle of learning. Then potentially not having users is not a demotivator as long as you are better than what u were yesterday.
Don't do it. The issue with CP is that the problem has to solved in very short time frame. Real life problems are not like this. That's why CP skills are not relevant for l5+ job. It can be nice hobby, but it's better to have hobby as far away form day to day job as possible.
Why don’t you do what you enjoy doing? If it’s competitive programming, just go for it. There is no point consulting a thousand people when your decisions and consequences affect you and you alone. If the 💰 is good it’s a perk. The real currency in life is satisfaction at work and at home, having meaning relationships based on trust and respect and having the reputation for doing the right thing.