Hi everyone,
I am a beginner on Codeforces (newbie rating ~800), and I wanted to share a few simple but important things I learned while participating in my first few contests.
These are not advanced tricks or optimizations — just basic observations that helped me reduce mistakes and understand problems better. I hope this helps other beginners like me.
Always read constraints before coding Earlier, I used to directly start coding after reading the statement. Many wrong answers happened because the input size was too large for my approach or I used int where long long was required. Now I first decide the time complexity and data types before writing code.
Edge cases are as important as main logic Even when the core logic is correct, missing edge cases like single element, empty range, or all values being the same can easily cause WA. Testing small cases manually helped me a lot.
Div-3 A/B problems are usually straightforward Many times I felt that a problem looks too easy and I must be missing something. But most of the time, problem A is direct implementation and problem B is a simple observation plus a loop. Keeping the solution simple reduced errors.
Learn by reading accepted solutions After solving (or failing) a problem, I try to read two or three accepted solutions and understand how others approached it. This helped me learn common patterns and cleaner coding styles.
Consistency matters more than rating Even solving one or two problems per contest is progress. Rating may fluctuate, but learning compounds over time.
I hope this post helps other beginners who are just starting out. If you have any additional tips or corrections, please feel free to share them in the comments.
