I love programming. I love competition. I always have, I’ve always embraced the joy of learning that is enhanced by the feeling of competition. So when I heard about competitive programming, I was over the moon! This will detail my journey and progress through the world of Competitive Programming. Jump on the coding train with me, it's going to be a fun ride!

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This was about a year ago, but I really didn’t take it too seriously until this summer. I had participated in some online contests and done fairly well. I even made the Gold Division in the USACO(United States of America Computing Olympiad), which is the second highest division. Throughout this 4–5 month period, I just hoped that I would progress through the ranks without doing any work at all, obviously, that isn’t the greatest idea.

What is Competitive Programming?

Competitive Programming is a mind sport. It consists of either individuals or teams coming up with solutions to algorithmic problems within a certain time limit. Some of the more famous programming contests are the IOI (International Olympiad of Informatics) and the ACM-ICPC ( Association for Computing Machinery — International Collegiate Programming Contest).

What resources am I going to use?

Textbook: Principles of Algorithmic Problem Solving by Johan Sannemo

Text Editor: Visual Studio Code

Problem Sites:

• Codeforces
• Kattis
• CSES

What did I do this week?

Alright, here’s what you clicked on the article for. Feel free to follow along at your own pace.

• I went through chapter 1 and 2 in the textbook and absorbed as much as I could about C++.
• I learned how most Competitive Programming problems are formatted and how to cut through to the heart of the problem.
• I did 50 odd problems from the problem sites above.
• Did all the exercises in chapter 2 of the textbook.

What did I Learn?

• The format of a C++ program
• How to implement basic programs into C++
• The format of Codeforces contests

I didn’t learn a whole lot this week due to it being mostly a refresher course on things I already knew, however, next week looks to be a completely different matter.

Goals for next week

1. Finish at least chapter 3 in the textbook.
2. Do 1 Codeforces contest
3. Do 30 CSES Problems
4. Do all the exercises in chapter 3 on Kattis.