Practice Competitive Programming?

I had this confusion running in my head about whether or not to practice competitive programming. I read many articles and blog posts about this, talked to few people about this, but it (the confusion) was still there.

And then, there came a situation where I was developing an Android app, specifically, working on sync with cloud database. I was going through the same phases as in solving any other programming problem. Oh yeah. Had I practiced competitive programming enough, I would have finished this faster because my brain would be trained to handle these situations by now.

Only competitive programming? Not necessary, I’d say. Anything that challenges your thinking. Puzzles, crosswords, chess and many other.

I believe competitive programming is a lot different than build big products or working in huge companies. They prefer quality more than speed. If you are building things, doing freelancing, then go on. But to get a grip over the algorithms and data structures, we should be practicing competitive programming. Maybe thats the reason all the companies use it to short-list people for hiring.

We can get our thinking right and structure it over time if we are practicing programming. With that, we can even learn new things quicker.

To conclude, competitive programming is important and if practiced in free time, does good to you.

That’s all I have.

Keep Coding!