Intro to Competitive Programming
“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”
A webinar on “Introduction to Competitive Programming” was organized by members of the CodeChef CIEM Chapter on 23rd of December 2020, Wednesday around 6 pm for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-year students from all the departments of Calcutta Institute of Engineering and Management.
This induction session was aimed to help students to introduce the concept of Competitive Programming and spread the culture in our college. We explained how to practice competitive programming on the CodeChef platform along with all the coding tricks and tips they need to have up their sleeve to get into their dream company.
Competitive programming is a mind sport usually held over the Internet or a local network, involving participants trying to program according to provided specifications: The goal is not to write software or build anything. The goal is to write a shortcode for specific, narrowly-defined problems.
The Session consisted of a presentation and a Live Demo of a sample problem being solved in 2 programming languages (Python and C++). In the Session, we showed “What is Competitive Programming”, “Reason to practice Competitive Programming”, “How to Get Started”, “Platform to be Used”, “Contests to take Part”, “Resources to Used to Learn or Practice Competitive Programming”, and “How to Practice”.
The presentation was followed by a Live Demo where our executive members showed how to solve a problem in CodeChef. In the Demo, we showed all the elements of the CodeChef platform and what it is used for or what it means like; Submit Button, Problem Code, Problem I/O, Sample Example, Source Memory, Compilation Time, etc. Then the problem was first solved in Python Language and then the same in C++. It was done to show the audiences the difference in using different languages in Competitive Programming. This was later followed by how to take part in various contests organized by CodeChef or increase one’s coding ability at the CodeChef platform.
The key points of this Webinar were:
- Spread the culture and get more students engaged in Competitive Programming.
- Using CodeChef as one of the platforms for all of their practice sessions.
- Make students understand the importance of Competitive Programming while taking part in various Competitions.
The webinar helped the rising Competitive programmers to develop these skills:
1. Learning new things quickly
2. Abstract thinking
3. Problem solving
The Host for the Session was Deepraj Rakshit (Media and Outreach Lead at CodeChef CIEM), the Speaker of the webinar was Abir Bhattacharya, while the live demo was shown by Joyita Sarkar and Ranadip Ghosh. The session ended with QnA Session by Aritra Banerjee (Team Lead at CodeChef CIEM). The Session was a huge success as the number of participants who attended exceeded our expectations and the session was indeed a lively and educative one.