Programming is one of the stupidest things((jokes apart…) to do in the entire universe because you need to tell your computer how to do something, but all the above names are famous for doing this stupidity. Now you can’t deny that this is a valuable skill set and if you are actually interested doing this stupidest and funniest (jokes apart) thing then a straight forward advice for you is…pick up a language, learn the fundamentals of coding, start practicing on coding challenges websites and jump into the Competitive Programming.
Competitive Programming is the best way to get noticed by top product-based companies and crack interviews there but the question is Where to start?. Which website is good if you are new to programming? What are some websites and what are the contests to participate and compete with others? So below we list out all
those websites and contests that will provide you the answers to these questions about Competitive Programming…
GeeksforGeeks
GeeksforGeeks. Whether programming excites you or you feel stifled, wondering how to prepare for interview questions or how to ace data structures and algorithms, GeeksforGeeks is a one-stop
solution. Here are multiple coding challenges. These challenges are divided into different topics of Data Structures and Algorithms that will help you to build a solid foundation on each topic. You can find all the easy, medium and hard level coding problems on this website. You can also take various courses for practicing and preparing for the technical interviews.
TopCoder
Topcoder community is the primary source of the workforce behind all Topcoder projects. It is open and global: anybody, with a few legal restrictions dictated by US laws, and listed in Community Terms, can join and compete, without any financial commitment to Topcoder. Also, participation in challenges organized in the interests of commercial clients generally requires the community member to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Intellectual property for the winning submissions to commercial challenges is passed to the client, in exchange for monetary prizes paid to the winners.
While the majority of community members participate in Topcoder challenges as regular competitors, those who become recognized for their performance, and involvement in community life (via communication in Topcoder forums, attending Topcoder events, etc.), are offered additional roles in the community, which include: copilots (technical coordinators of challenges), problem writers, reviewers, etc.Since the end of 2014 till the end of 2017, a Community Advisory Board (CAB) was selected from active community members for a one-year term to help improve communications between Topcoder company and its community.In 2018 the CAB was replaced by the Topcoder MVP (Most Valuable Player) program
Codeforces
Codeforces is a Russian website which is best for competitive programmers and hosts contests more frequently. They organize 4 to 5 short contests of 2 hours in a month. Sometimes they also host contest 2-3 per week. They have a variety of language options for coding. After participating in a lot of contest you can also create your own contest and earn money through this site.
This is one of the good site for the preparation of ACM-ICPC (Olympics of programming). You can sort the question and practice problem here, you can also use its blog system to ask questions. The site has a strong and huge community for help. We recommend this site for some experienced programmers because challenges here are most likely too advanced for beginners.
CodeChef
Cook the best recipe with your code, become a master chef and get into the top companies. Sounds funny but CodeChef is really an awesome Indian based competitive programming website which has a large community of programmers. It is an Indian educational initiative of Directi. Problems are categorized in different levels like Beginner, Easy, Medium, and Hard.
Some of the beginners find this website a bit difficult even if they are solving easy level questions over here. So switching to this website after HackerRank will be a good choice if you are starting from the very basic. The best thing about this website is that if you are unable to solve the problems, you can check the editorial, try to write a solution again and get it accepted and if you have solved the problem still you can check the code of other good coders to find the best solution for the same problem. In both of the way, you learn a lot.
Codechef hosts mainly three contests every month i.e. Long Challenge (10 days long), Cook-off, and Lunchtime. Codechef also hosts a global programming event Snackdown to compete with the other programmers. They provide a variety of language choices and their programmers use the discussion boards to post the problems they encounter during practice or competition. AWS, Samsung, Alibaba Cloud. these are some top companies hire candidates from this website.
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