Coding Competitions: Beyond A Virtual Community

What are coding competitions?
Coding Competitions

Technology is changing at a fast pace and so should the skillset of programmers, developers, and coders. One such way to do it is to actively participate in coding competitions from the beginning to learn the concepts, practice them and become a pro.

Below is the list of some popular and highest-ranking coding challenges that can expand your learning, aptitude, and analytical approach towards programming.

Popular Coding Competitions challenges

  • TopCoder:

     
    It is an online platform that offers a list of algorithm challenges that students can solve with the help of their online code editor. Competitive programming is a sport where participants try to solve algorithmic (step-by-step instructions to bring the output from input based on a situation) problems as fast as possible to get a rank. The faster you code better your rank is.
  • Coderbyte:

    Founded in 2012 this platform allows you to improve your coding skills with their library of 300+ challenges and prepare for coding interviews with content from leading technological companies.

    It is a web application with a large collection of coding challenges, introductory videos, interview preparation courses, and algorithm tutorials that helps people practice their programming skills and prepare for coding interviews.
  • HackerRank

    The platform provides challenges for several different domains such as Algorithms, Mathematics, SQL, Functional Programming, Artificial Intelligence covering coding languages like C, Java, Python, Ruby, and more. The platform boasts a series of competitions that vary from short-form to long-form time duration catering to competitive programming at large.
  • CodeChef:

    The platform is created to help programmers make it big in the world of algorithms, computer programming, and programming contests. We host three featured contests every month and give away prizes and goodies to the winners as encouragement.

    Apart from this, the platform is open to the entire programming community to host their own contests. Major institutions and organizations across the globe use our platform to host their contests. On average, 30+ external contests are hosted on our platform every month.
  • Codeforces:

    It is a Russian coding platform that hosts a range of competitive coding competitions for coders to compete at the world level. Their contest allows you to draft solutions for the problems that are prompted during the competition. It also allows people to hack and challenge other solutions for a coding problem that help the challenger earn points.

    The platform conducts and offers diverse contest categories with a duration that gives a moderate coding experience. 
  • LeetCode

    Offering over 1500 Programming Questions, this platform aims to boost your coding abilities with a range of interesting questions. Their platform hosts contests that last for 90 minutes in which you can solve the challenges in their own online editor aka, Playground in any one of the supported programming languages.

    The platform at large hosts a massive number of active programmers solving questions every day and supports 14 coding languages to diversify the Q&A.
  • International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC)/ ACM-ICPC:

    The world-renowned and prestigious coding competition that all coders should attempt to undertake. This innovative programming event aims to accelerate increased ambition, problem-solving aptitude, and opportunities of the strongest students in the field of computing.

    The competition features Local Contests, Regional Contests, Regional Championships, and The World Finals.

Each year ICPC kick-starts the competition with its local competitions and in phases moving towards the World Finals. All the teams during each contest are allotted five hours to solve 10 Programming Questions for which the solutions must be submitted in C, C++, Java, Python or Kotlin language.  


Also read these 10 tips to ace competitive programming challenges

Importance of participating in Coding Competitions

  • Company Placements: Participating in at least some of the leading coding competitions can not only boost your chances for securing a job with a bigwig but can equally be rewarding and promising. Because a good programmer will not only stay at par with the ongoing tech trends and technologies but also with unique problem-solving methods that can be learned extensively at coding competitions.
  • Faster: Regularly practising at the coding competitions can stem-up you speed and equally reducing your chances of missing out on key details with an improved conversion rate because contest programmers are accustomed to strict deadlines.
  • Focused: Participating in coding competitions frequently improvises your ability to focus and scale-up your eye to catch the details.
  • Debugging: Programmers that are frequently participating in online coding competitions are also incredible debuggers, as debugging is a crucial aspect of contest programming.

    Average programmers are 90% satisfied with a 99% working solution, however, for contest programmers, the approach is always binary – it either works correctly all the time, or it doesn’t work at all.
  • Optimum Exposure: Generally, contest programmers are exposed to an elite group of coders that are way forward in their approach when it comes to coding and programming.

    These coders not only comprehend the questions but maintain the balance without being overconfident that can help them build a global community of coders they can approach for mentorship, professional and project-based opportunities.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there any coding competition?

There are several on-going coding competitions going on at websites like CodeChef, Codeforces, Hackerrank etc.

How do I practice for coding competitions?

To practice for coding competitions you can look at archives of previous contests and try to solve those questions in a limited amount of time.

What happens in a coding competition?

In a coding competition, some questions of varying difficulty levels are given to the participants for them to solve them in a particular time frame.

Where can I find coding challenges?

You can find coding challenges on websites like CodeChef, CodeForces, Hackerrank, TopCoder Dare2Compete, Interview Bit etc.

Conclusion

Programming can be time-taking yet intriguing if you know the hacks and methods to try and innovate something each day. We have listed down all the right reasons for you to code extensively during this time to polish your programming skills.

There is a reason that programmers religiously and consecutively participate in coding competitions that can a major contributor to your work profile.