Competitive Coding

Competitive Programming or Coding Competitions or Coding Contests are few terms used to refer online programming contests among several groups where the problems are given and to be solved within a deadline as a team. These require very intense programming skill. But don’t be afraid. What makes you feel scary today, might make you feel naïve tomorrow.. you never know of it!

To introduce and motivate to this topic, I would mention FOUR events: First, during an event in IIIT Guwahati in January 2016, I met an M.Tech pass out student of IIIT Allahabad. He said the B. Tech students there are very fond of programming / coding. From the third year they participate in different coding competitions in campus and in online. And the recruiters have the perception that IIITA students means very good programmers.

Second, I remember reading an interview in weekly e-newsletter of my alma mater NIT Rourkela with the title “Tale of a Google Girl”, where the girl, Susnata Roy narrated her exciting experience of successful interview at Google and there I first heard of the term competitive programming. Then I searched Internet for this and found that few websites are there for online coding contests.

Third, in 2015 summer, our department organized a Faculty Development Program (FDP) where a talk was given by one successful alumni of our department, Dipankar Dutta, where he mentioned his involvement with coding in his spare time from the otherwise very creative and positive working environment in Microsoft Hyderabad.

Fourth, in 2015 TCS HR Eastern Head visited our campus and met with our students and later on with the faculties and advocated the online coding contest TCS CodeVita from where they would give offer letter to the students, irrespective of their batch (First Year, or Second Year, or Third Year, or Final Year) who will qualify the rounds of this contest followed by an HR interview round. It is very good fact that four students of IT department of our Institute cracked CodeVitae. Meanwhile, it is also not off the track that according to the TCS HR, TCS categorizes our Institute with very high rank as B+ (or A?) category at par with the government engineering colleges like newly set up NITs.

To conclude, few websites that students should refer regarding competitive coding are: Top Coder, Code Chef, IEEE Xtreme (only for IEEE members) etc. Also many articles in blogs are available on these. And students who are feeling excited, do explore this field and get enriched and make your campus empowered with more vibes.