In my last contest(Educational Codeforces Round 143) I achieved my personal best rating and after few months of practicing finally became a candidate master. While I admit it's a rewarding experience, I couldn't help wondering to improve even more what should I focus from now on. To be more sepecific, I really want to know what it feels like to solve problems as a master or even grandmaster.
To summarize my past coding experience, I divide all my solved problems into two categories: problem with a fixed templet and problem requires innovative thinking. In my perspective, as I practiced more, I become more skilled at the former as I learned more templets. As for the latter, I do understand that solving more is helpful since you might encouter an essentially identical problem, yet still there are many more that are unfamilier and hard to come up with solution.
So, for all the skilled coders, which exactly is more important in your perspective? The experience of solving lots of problems or the ability to come up with solution for the new problems? Or maybe those two are the same thing? \
(My English is reaaly bad. If there are some stupid errors in my post you are more than welcome to point them out)
I'm not a grandmaster or even master, but being able to solve problems you have never seen is the most powerful tool in the world.
I agree. And that's why I'm so eager to find it out :)
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as a super very highly extremely skilled coder I can tell you practice more son.
Solving lots of problems leads to coming up with solution to new problems if you are practicing right. You should reflect when solving what sort of ideas you generated and why, and eventually the process of generating ideas and finding relations in new problems feels the same as realizing ideas you already knew.
Thanks a lot for the tips! I do realize solving new problems rely heavily on ideas of previously solved problems. The whole thing feels like building bridge from both end and trying to have them met in the middle, and even if I managed to overcome the uncertainty, in the end it may turns out I spent all the time building the wrong bridge. I guess practicing more could be helpful on that matter too, so you can be more efficient and precious on your choosing of ways?