I've been facing a problem for half a year now, which probably few people have, but if anyone has, I would like to get some information about it.
Many people are now making a mistake in learning — if they don't understand the solution to a problem and go to look at Editorial, they barely delve into it, but simply rewrite the code and send the solution. I have the exact opposite problem. If I don't understand something, I start digging into it until I understand it 100%. I mean REALLY 100%. As long as I'm faced with the question "why does this work?" I won't send the task and won't be able to do other things in my life. It looks like an addiction. And probably the biggest problem here is that sometimes it comes to axioms that simply exist and it is simply impossible to dig deeper into why this is so. In this case, I still continue to ask the question "why is it so and not otherwise", it can come to philosophy, and I will just sit for 5 hours trying to understand this, turn to DeepSeek, turn to my teachers. And so on until the "moment of insight" comes. When something clicks in your head, and the epiphany "SO THIS IS WHY IT WORKS" begins.
I consider this a problem because one simple task can get you stuck for a day, or even several.
I don't think this is a rare issue. At least I have a friend with exactly the same parameters as you described. And yet, I think it's better than if you read the editorial without thinking.
There are 90% of users that grinding a lot of problems just because they read the editorial after 5 minutes of stucking on the problem :/
You can see 60-70 problems 1400-1700 are solved in their profiles, but they still <1400
Sometimes I myself come up with a solution that I can proove why it works but I don't know how did the solution come to me and I would try to back track my my chain of thoughts, sometimes I fail to backtrack simply because the solution randomly appeared to me and that feels unsatisfying and I remain irritated with that.
i think the moments like "eurekaaa, i finally understand how this works" are the moments i think which push you to keep learning. there is no point in having half baked knowledge. if teach yourself something half baked, your intuition is already deteriorating, and then ur ability to use ur intuition and solve newer problems will be null. XD
Pick-me ahh post
You don't need to understand anything unless there is a need to -- the only reason you need to understand something is if you are already not in control on your amount of knowledge. If you know the solutions to 1000 tasks, you better find some deeper relations and interpretation to draw from this knowledge faster. If you know the solution to 10 tasks, just remember them.
You need considerable data to make a good realisations, this is true universally (AI and what not). A realisation based on incomplete data or experience may as well have been guessing. This is the point that you shouldn't dig any deeper. For example, if you have solved 5 segment trees problem maybe it is worth looking for common pattern and understandings, but before then just keep it as a random trick that was useful one time.
This was a tough lesson through personal experience but the context why it happened is too complicated to describe here.