What Is Competitive Programming? Definition, Uses

Coding is about solving real-life problems with an easy approach using the concepts of the programming world.

As a coder, you must know the importance of solving competitive programs. Competitive programs help to enhance your art of thinking and help you come up with the most optimised solutions to a problem. When some online coding platform conducts coding contests, then it is known as competitive programming. It aims to find the one who can come up with the most optimal solution to a problem statement.

Table of Contents

Why learn Competitive Programming?

Competitive programming helps to expand your thinking abilities and helps to develop your coding skills. Competitive programming is a practice in which we solve some medium to high-level questions under a specified time limit. It is important to learn competitive programming as it helps to improve our coding skills, and we also learn how to convert our naive code into well-optimized resource-efficient codes, which will help to solve all the real-time problems.

We know that resources are important and as a programmer, we must deliver the product completely optimised in every aspect. For this, competitive programming is important.

Also read: 75 Basic Programming Problems and Tutorials for Practice

How To Prepare for Competitive Programming

Learning programming is a tough and time-consuming process. It requires consistency and dedication. Competitive programming is a more challenging phase of learning programming. Here we learn to solve problem statements in real-time, and that too under a fixed time limit. Read the complete article to learn how to learn competitive programming.

1. Choose a Programming language

The first step in learning competitive programming is choosing one language out of the many available. Think properly, as there is no such rule to select the best programming language. Choose a programming language based on your choice. You can use any programming language in your interview. There is no need to worry about it. if you are new to coding, you can choose Python as its syntax is easier, and also it has a large library of support. However, if you are at an intermediate level and not new, you can choose any language out of C++, Java, Javascript, React, etc.

2. Learn To Optimize your Code

While solving a programming problem, you first need to think about the logic to reach a possible solution to the problem. As the resources are limited, you then need to come up with the best solution which is optimized. Time and space complexity must be optimized to get the desired solution. It is one of the most important steps in your coding learning path. Having a good concept of time complexity and space complexity is important. Learn the complexity analysis of an algorithm.

3. Learning Data Structure and Algorithm

After learning the fundamentals of a programming language. You need to learn data structure and algorithms next. Data structures will help you in getting the best approach for converting a naive solution to an optimal one. Some of the major data structures you need to learn are given here.

Array
Linked List
Queue
Tree
Graph
Trie
Stack
Hashing

Learning data structure requires a lot of time. Hence, you need to be both patient and consistent towards your learning.

Algorithms help you develop logic, which you can use to solve a problem statement. Many algorithms exist for a single problem, but our main aim is to find the optimal one. We need to use an algorithm with less time complexity and requiring constant or lesser space. There are many good algorithms such as binary search algorithms, sorting algorithms, dynamic programming, bit manipulating, Dijikshtras algorithm, etc. Learning these algorithms will help you optimize your code.

Also read: What is the Difference Between Coding and Programming?

4. Practice More and More

Learning coding requires a lot of practice. Every problem will teach you a new concept and give you a more optimal approach. You need to maintain discipline and solve basic programming questions, data structures, and algorithms and also attend different coding competitions organized by many platforms. There are many free coding websites which provide online coding compilers to learn and practice coding. PW Skills Lab is a great place to practice and enhance your coding skills.

5. Take part in coding competitions

Many coding platforms organize weekly or biweekly coding competitions where you can compete with other programmers and solve many problems within a given time frame. They will also offer you batches and rewards. It will boost your confidence and help you learn more. Check the link to learn about some of these top coding platforms.

PW Coding Courses 2024

We provide in-browser IDE which will help you run and deploy your applications or projects easily. The complete feature is available for the learner completely free of charge. Learn programming, Data science, Web development and much more in the PW Skills Lab.

Also read: 50 Most Asked Basic Coding Questions of All Time

FAQs

What is competitive programming?

Competitive programming is a well-defined logical solution to real-life problems within a certain time frame. Competitive programming is an intermediate level to a high level of coding problems.

Why learn competitive programming?

What are some of the top coding platforms in 2024?

Some of the top coding platforms are hackerRank, leetcode, codechef, etc. You can learn, practice and compete on these websites and improve your programming skills. Read the article to know more.