HatedFate's blog

I need guide in getting better.
By HatedFate, history, 4 years ago, In English

I just started codeforces a week ago and I can barely solve 800 rated problems. I genuinely suck at solving problems for some reason. I’ve been looking into education rounds, and watching the explanations if I can’t solve it. But sometimes, I feel like I’m not learning anything from the videos. Any tips on getting better? tbh I don’t know if I should even be doing codeforces right now.

edit: I’ve seen some of your answers today. I think I will be sticking to Ajcoder as per the suggestions and will return to codeforces after a while. I’m not about to give up anyway since I enjoy writing codes so much. Thanks y’all for the help.

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4 years ago, # |
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Try solving Div 3 A's and B's first from the problemset and then gradually increase.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    I don't think problem number is a good parameter to judge problem difficulty. My advice is, go to problemset and sort problems by solved count or/and use rating filters. Also, give virtual contests (I think Div3s will be a good choice) time to time to keep track of your growth and once you're comfortable with the contest environment start giving real contests.

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4 years ago, # |
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um I don't know I might be on a streak of luck or something but for past 4 contests I have done slightly better than I normally do.

If you see my problem solve count it is quite a lot for my rating range..(been practicing constantly for last few months)

I think you should keep solving +100-200 rating against your current rating problems above you and don't worry much. Have some belief and don't think of the problem as some impenetrable wall.

The rest is generic advice practice, upsolving, virtuals.

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4 years ago, # |
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Try practicing from another site like hackerrank.

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4 years ago, # |
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Try https://atcoder.jp/ contests, the abc. There the A and B are more simple than codeforces A and B.

And at https://open.kattis.com/problems the simple ones are fairly simple, too.

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4 years ago, # |
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There are many books on competitive programming get one and proceed. For ex. this.

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4 years ago, # |
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Made by Dr. Mostafa Saad. Clone this spreadsheet and start practicing from A. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iJZWP2nS_OB3kCTjq8L6TrJJ4o-5lhxDOyTaocSYc-k/edit#gid=84654839

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4 years ago, # |
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Participate in Contest div 4 https://mirror.codeforces.com/contestInvitation/d477e058f265a72092af5c11074234d720a0fb5f

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4 years ago, # |
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Persist. That is it's all about. CP is not about knowing the answer instantaneously after you see the question. It's about digging into the question, thinking about it, and then reaching a solution and coding it.

With time you'll be better at doing this. Don't give up yet.

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