Anuragh Barua

IS COMPETITIVE PROGRAMMING MUST FOR DEVELOPERS Meta Description If you love solving real-world problems through coding you must wonder if competitive programming must for a software developer job at a big MNC. Introduction [100 words] Do you have what it takes to solve a real-world problem through coding? Or do you want to try out a field where you can enhance your problem-solving skills while learning new things? Then, Competitive Programming is for you! You must have tried out some sport be it indoor or outdoor. You get better at any sport with practice and eventually compete in a tournament to test your skills. Similarly, Competitive Programming is also a sport you can get better at with dedicated practice. Moreover, you get to test your CP skills in world-renowned tournaments in real-time. What is Competitive Programming? [200 words] Competitive Programming is a mind sport wherein you solve a puzzle or a problem by writing efficient code. The problem is to be solved in a way that the code solution is fast, consumes a minimum amount of memory, and gives desired output in the least amount of time. Just like any other sport, it demands rigorous hours of practice to get better at solving problems in a stipulated amount of time. You have to come up with the best optimal solution, that takes the least amount of memory and time to run and satisfies all the given constraints. Competitive Programming develops your logic or logical thinking ability to solve problems through coding. Most of the time, you are given a puzzle or problem with some constraints and you are required to solve those problems by writing computer programs. Competitive Programming is recently getting popular among university students as referrals to big MNCs are subject to ranks of CP profiles. Most of the students enter Competitive Programming intending to score a good CP contest ranking so they could get placed in big companies. However, they are get selected for having the skill and knowledge they would never even use in their whole career. Thus, just knowing Competitive Programming does not mean you are a good software developer. Why do Competitive Programming [300 words] There’s a reason why Competitive Programming has become popular among university students. Apart from polishing problem-solving skills, CP also has many more benefits. Let’s discuss: 1. You get to work at big MNCs like Google and Facebook Nowadays, many companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook filter out good candidates based on their Competitive Programming skills. They regularly conduct CP contests and sponsor hackathons to select the best talent out there. Selecting participants on the basis of their contest ranks and CP profile ensure they get the best programmers with the ability to solve complex tasks. 2. Makes learning things easy for you As a competitive programmer, you get to explore different types of questions with various patterns and formats. You constantly need to learn and unlearn things, study advanced algorithms and practice various data structures. Thus, you build a habit of learning things faster which gives you an edge over other applicants with no CP experience. 3. Enhances your debugging skills Debugging is the greatest skill in the field of programming. And competitive programmers hone their debugging skills so much that debugging interview problems becomes a piece of cake. Being a mind sport, the more you solve harder problems, the more you build your analytical and rational thinking. 4. Builds your logical thinking The best thing you can get from Competitive Programming is logic. Solving a vast number of problems with hard difficulty makes your logic rock-solid. Once you build good logic using CP, you start to think of solutions with logical approaches faster and efficiently code the solution. 5. You become a team player In a field like software development, teamwork is of utmost importance to build awesome projects in less amount of time. CP teaches you to work in a team and you get to participate in contests as a team. Thus, you learn how to use the strengths and weaknesses of everyone on your team to achieve a goal by dividing responsibilities among members. Competitive Programming vs Software Development [300 words] You must feel that Competitive Programming is the same as real-world software development. However, that’s not the case. What you do in Competitive Programming is way different from what you will do in real-world software development. Then why do tech companies recruit students with great Competitive Coding profiles? Competitive Programming not only builds your logical thinking but makes you great at problemsolving, something that Companies look for in their candidates. However, it does not mean a great Competitive Programmer is going to be a great Software Developer. When you think of Competitive Programming, you picture someone solving tough problems on online programming websites like CodeChef and Spoj. However, it’s true that by doing CP you build analytical thinking and problem-solving skills. You also get to learn about Data Structures and Algorithms in deep. These skills add to what a software developer will do! Well, a software developer also writes code when building software. However, chances are that most of the time, they are going to use frameworks and libraries with already-implemented algorithms. Thus, they just use the code written by a competitive programmer to solve a complex problem. But, software developers cover a wide spectrum of things ranging from scalability issues, how the framework they’re going to use is going to affect the complexity of the system, and so on. So, just writing code won’t work in real-world software development. You ought to know about Operating Systems, Databases, and many more core concepts of Computer Science to be a good developer. Moreover, competitive programmers are focused on just solving a problem and their code is practically unreadable. However, being a software developer, you are expected to write good, readable code that’s going to be read by developers using the codebase. Is competitive programming a must for developers? [450 words] Competitive programming is a mind sport and it must be practiced as a hobby instead of something that you use just to clear interviews. Companies prefer good competitive programmers because of their stronghold in Data Structures and Algorithms and with time, they get trained to become software developers. They learn to write good code, and good documentation, unlearn stuff, and learn new emerging technologies. Now, coming to the question, “is competitive programming a must for developers?”. The answer to this question is both yes and no. Competitive programming is not necessary for developers however it can be a great addition to your arsenal. It’s not true that every competitive programmer is a good developer and it’s also not true that a good developer cannot solve problems through code. Being a good developer also demands debugging skills to make the software bug free. Thus, Competitive Programming is not necessary but you are encouraged to try it out! Then, how do we clear interviews of big MNCs as they recruit competitive programmers? Well, doing Competitive Programming is a bit overkill for technical interviews. How can a company evaluate your developing skills by making you solve an unknown problem in a few minutes? A problem completely unrelated to any work you’ll do in the future in that company. It’s just a measure of how many algorithms and patterns you can learn to present a solution to any coding problem. Competitive Programming has no real-world use case. You would never find any codebase, be it of any company, with unreadable code and poor documentation. A codebase with meaningless variable names is optimized just to take less time to execute, not for readability and maintenance. Competitive Programming is just one of the many ways to improve problem-solving skills. However, it’s not the only way. There are ways people have made it to those big MNCs and they were not competitive programmers. Problem-solving skills do not mean just coming up with a solution to an unknown problem within minutes. It also means having the attitude and ability to convert thought into code. You could build good projects, create a great portfolio, and master tech stacks. Try to write blogs, create content to showcase your skills in public, and build credibility in that tech stack. Build good connections, network with great people, and attend events and meetups. Who knows you might get a recommendation for a big company. Conclusion [150 words] Competitive Programming and software development do have overlapping skills. It’s not that if you do CP, you can’t be a good developer or if you don’t do CP, you won’t be able to code. Well, CP competitions can be a bit harder than most technical interviews. However, if you have an interest in Competitive Programming, you must give these contests and build your profile. But, if you don’t want to do CP, just don’t. Nowadays, students get frustrated if they could not solve a CP question in a contest and fear that they might not be able to clear an interview. But, it’s not true. Try to think of Competitive Programming as a sport, some are good at it and some are not. You can even play cricket as a player or just enjoy a match as an audience. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t run or you aren’t determined enough to do a task. It’s just that it’s not a domain you specialize in. So, give Competitive Programming a try and if you don’t like it, strengthen your Data Structures and Algorithms and you would get placed one day. If you want to know more about Competitive Programming and how to be good at it, check out our complete guide to CP. Want to get prepared for big MNCs by strengthening your DS and Algo, check out our course here.