My journey to become a 3 star programmer on CodeChef.
Before I begin, I’d want to state that this is my first piece. Please leave constructive criticism so that I may better my future writings.
So it was back in my grade 10 [2016], when I learned to code in Java (yeah right I’m from an ICSE school) I was extremely thrilled after I wrote my first “Hello World” program. I wanted just to learn more and more about getting things coded (like coding to build a calculator and stuff).
Now after learning a few more concepts in Java, I decided I wanted to compete with others to see how good of a programmer I am. That’s when I began googling “Coding contests for school kids” and came across codechef.
Back in the day, codechef had this contest series going on called as LoC [Lord of Code] and I decided to participate in this contest hoping that I would win.
But to my surprise the level of problems were beyond my understanding and imagination. I however managed solving 1 problem completely and 1 other problem partially. The struggle in solving this was real. I did not know that I was not supposed to have print statements telling “Enter the value of N“ and so on. Moreover the internet back in the day was extremely expensive for me to afford. (I remember paying Rs.199 for a data pack of 2GB (3G speed) and after exceeding 2GB it would be 2G speed for remaining 30days).
So I decided to solve problems on codechef regularly. I spent a lot of time scribbling in my books trying to implement logic to solve problems. I had no idea about the existence of stacks, queues and other data structures. Moreover I used Java to solve the problems. So I used to try solving problems purely by using concepts of loops, conditional statements and arrays only.
Next phase is my prep for competitive exams to get into a top college after my 12th boards. So I had an extremely long break of 2 years away from my CP.
Fast forward after giving all my competitive exams of CET, JEE Mains and Advanced (yes i qualified for advanced and also had a decent rank in advanced, just not good enough to get into IIT CSE branch xD).
I decided to get back up and start coding. That’s when I realized codechef has these rated contests and has a star rating system along with laddus reward.
So here begins the real struggle of solving these problems in the given time constraints. Just to give you a glimpse of the level of beginner I was back in the day, I did not even know the meaning of “constraints” in the codechef problem statements. I slowly started understanding how submissions are made and how problems are solved on codechef. Also, I still had not learnt the concepts of advanced data structures and algorithms.
There were times when my rating increased and decreased.
There were a lot of ups and downs. Within just a span of 2–3months, I almost made it to 3 star (almost). Then I sort of underperformed in my next few contests which almost brought me back to 1 star. I buckled up here and decided to give my 100%. Spent time analyzing my mistakes, solving practice problems and also solving on platforms like Hackerrank. You can checkout my ratings graphs to see the ups and downs.
After all the hard-work I just made it to 3 star and it was really very satisfying. (All this with the knowledge of only basic programming)
But maintaining and rising above 3 star was even more difficult than getting into the Division 2 of 3 star. Right in the next contest I fell back to 2 star and had to again struggle getting back to 3 star. I now took a break to learn and understand Stacks, queues and other data structures and algorithms. I understood the concept of time complexity. After taking a break to learn, I was back in the ring for May Long Challenge.
Finally after solving 7 out of 9 problems in May LONG challenge’21 and bagging a rank of 761 out of almost 30,000 + participants I finally made it to being a 3 star programmer again and am just 2 good contests away from being a 4 star programmer.
Hopefully I will soon find the time to build my skill and level up to being a 4 star programmer. I barely find time these days to participate in contests as I have a job and a few freelance tie-ups.
PS: I’m a student pursuing B.E in CSE and am currently in my 5th SEM (3rd Year).
Happy Coding!🥂
