I found a profile of Japanese programmer: Anta who has solved 7 questions in this August Long Challenge in just 3 hours ,that also just after the start of contest.(between 3Pm and 6Pm 1August 2014). Also if u see his previous submissions , there also he has solved most of the questions in few hours only.
And,He solved REVERSE question in just 4 minutes.(after submitting PRGIFT)
How is this possible? I am just worrying how can someone be so fast at programming?
2 Likes
Chillax mate!!! It’s nothing unusual. In short contests(cook offs for eg.) people solve 5 questions in 2.5 hrs. So solving 7 in 4 seems quite possible and you can count the rest time period in between too. If you look at past Google code jam competitions you can see people solving 3 questions(that’s all they ask to solve in 2.5 hrs) within half an hour and most them aren’t Japanese. If you practice hard you can do it too.
1 Like
there’s being good and motivated and there’s being a natural… and then there’s being a natural and do that for a living which just crushes the entire competition… I ask @filmwalams if he/she has seen @mugurelionut’s number of submissions for the challenge problem? :))
4 Likes
It’s possible someone could start from scratch, having tremendous skill and speed.
But one could also have all their past algorithm implementations saved as a template, so that once they identify the algorithm desired for the problem, it can be mostly trivial cut-and-paste, only needing to tweak minor things to fit problem details.
Also, experience really does help. Seasoned competitive programmers have implemented most general algorithms many times in the past, and can quickly recognize when an algorithm they know could solve a particular problem.
tl;dr Keep coding!
5 Likes
I think he is an alien. 
2 Likes
@kuruma - I agree with you completely. And for the point regarding @mugurelionut surely he does have lot of patience to make 400 around submission for one problem. Desperation seems running out of limit here. 
1 Like
This guy did first 5 in 2 minutes. 
2 Likes
and with 100% accuracy. Oh! He is from korea. They do it in team.
2 Likes
@ashwini007k: Since we have 500 submissions available for the challenge problem, why not use them? 
500 submissions spread throughout the contest is not that much. You should check some of the long contests before the 500 submissions limit was introduced. Some competitors even made 5000 submissions for the challenge problem in one contest.
6 Likes
@mugurelionut Didn’t know that. I saw this the first time which caught my attention. I was awestruck by the idea of what drives people to make so many submissions for one problem??
This guy is a well known stud!