what about team contest?
And i donât believe in spoonfeeding. I thought that might be a helpful idea.After all it was just a feedback.
Yes, the team contest suggestion is good.
Look, basically what happens is, when you give feedback out of which the other person can only derive âHe needs spoonfeeding, thats the problem,â then frankly he wont do anything about it. He cannot spoon feed, and even if he can, he ought not to. Like, you said So,what i want is you guys teach us something like a topic and give us a question related on it with 2 or 3 days time , if you think from codechefâs perspective, it is tough,time-consuming and well, such things are usually done by people to earn money.
I mean, it comes across as you dont want to do anything by yourself, we should teach you, then give you problem, solution and help you debug and do everything else and only then you will do it. That sounds really bad.
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I vote for the appropriate fraction of laddus idea depending on the rank obtained in a contest. The current policy of cash rewards to top 3 performers may stay. But I support the idea of distributing appropriate laddus to remaining top performers or T-shirts, and it would be motivating as it will give a feeling of earning something.
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As you mentioned about serious training campsâŚthese are very few in India(I can hardly recall only the codechef training camp which happens in june).I also believe there should me more and frequently.Also as you mentionedâŚthe incentive by naming company is also not the solution according to me.
Let me take up a person X. He is in college(assume 2nd or 3rd year) and he is doing competitive for about an year and has become quite good at it.Let some of his friends are in the development side and are winning hackathons every single week(yes they happen this frequently).So What is gonna happen next? He is bound to loose motivation because the competitive guy is not winning anything that significant so frequently.This happens with many people(I have seen many).
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For such low numbers of red coders in India (the second most populous country in the world), I think the reason is lack of awareness (especially in the early stages when we are in schools or colleges).
I have also met some great software developers who arenât into CP, and when I asked them about it, most of the responses I hear are like - âItâs fun, I did participate a couple of times but I am not creating or innovating a new product using CPâ.
I donât know; Iâm not sure if we have so many hackathons here in Ukraine. Here it would be more like âyou can start working and making money from around 2nd year of your studies; why would you decide to spend your free time on CP instead?â.
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Damn! That sounds kind of cool to be honest!
Majority of developers outside India donât have competitive programming experience either. And the description you provided sounds correct to me.
In India people do competitive programming just to get a good job nothing else. To improve the scenario first we have to change the mentality of the people. If people do competitive programming for knowledge not for good job than their is a chance of improving competitive programming scenario in India.
Well everyone talking about colleges. Iâm a class 10 Indian school student speaking here in a studentâs perspective.
Main problems I face:
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Board exams & Academics.
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No environment or ecosystem.
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Parents and Society discouragement.
1.Academics: I had never heard a word related to âComputerâ in our curriculum. My friends and I were busy loading paragraphs to our brains literally to dump on the answer sheet. Our outdated education system takes computer science admissions through the marks scored in physics and chemistry! But not with the skill, interest or passion whatever it maybe.
So, students basically doesnât know anything about programming until they enter engineering college.
We have class 10 board exams, class 11 (in some states) and class 12 board exams. And there is another big brother so called IIT-JEE for which most of the Indian students sacrifice everything. Basically, no student practices coding at the risk of academics.
No time to code.For example, Iâm out of my home from 7AM to 8PM everyday for various things like studyhours, coaching centers,exams etc.
No coding environment: I used to stay late nights due to bugs. My parent scold. There is no one to learn with. It is so better if we have a team of coders. Internet or Google is the only way to discuss about a specific problem or solution. No one in my surroundings know about programming. They ask me questions like why I am wasting time with laptop instead of studying. Almost everyone of my friends want to join CS but they donât know why. usual conversations between me and my friends goes like this:
Me: Hey! what do you want to do in your life?
Friend: I will become a software engineer.(my friends actually doesnât know what software engineer does.)
Me: But why?
Friend: Itâs pretty easy than other jobs. We can sit in an air conditioned room entire the day in front of a computer and we can also earn crores.(Sundar pichai and satya nadella effect!)
Me: Are you really interested in programming?
Friend: Yeah! My father bought me a PC when I was a kid. I used to play games with it. And now I can operate computers and android devices so easily.
Me: My dear friend, There are things beyond operating computers,mobiles and playing games.
Parents & society: My parents say âYou should work in a computer repair shop after completing your class 10 exams. That is what you will do if you waste time with laptopâ A few months before I drove a hard bargain with my parents to buy me a laptop and they did. Then family members and friends of my parents used to ask some senseless questions to my parents like âHe is in class 10. So, he should study hard. why did you buy him a laptop? you are wasting his future.â At some point in my life I used to have thoughts like, "Why am I coding if everyone is opposing?" "I should stop coding and start studying so that my parents will be happy". The opposing force you get if you do things out of the rat race is unbearable. So, Instead of thinking out of the box, I should go with the rat race and study to score good marks in Physics and chemistry in order to get in to a good college for Computer science undergraduate degree.
I can do anything I want but badly I have to follow the mad INDIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM RAT RACE
Thanking you,
The frustrated Indian school student juggling with coding and academics.
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The real question is âHow?â
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I wonder why none from MIT participates in CP? Or, am I missing some best programmers from MIT actually participating in contests that I am not aware of? Or, they are on other platforms instead of CC?
I agree with that PoV that PCM decide way too much and beyond what they should. Maths is ok, but physics and chem for CS sound really weird.
Your parents arent wrong, they just want you to get a good engineering college- where you can get CS and pursue it. Because well, its a more fool-proof path.
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Competitiors from Russia, China excel in Competitive Programming because of their strong mathematical background right from the school days. And in India, people are mostly preparing for JEE and learning all the maths stuff during this time which is also not enough for CP.
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Most students start CP after getting into college after the first or second semester.
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Even if a student starts CP in school, he/she has the parental and peer pressure of preparing for JEE. There are not many colleges which admit students on the basis of programming skills.
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When students think they are not improving, they get demotivated and start doing some projects etc and leave it.
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Some people which continue doing CP are only doing it for high paying job and donât enjoy it. These people then complain that they are not improving even when they are trying hard.
So only a few people remain who continue,enjoy and have achieved success in CP.
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I got to know about coding stuff when i was in engineering 2nd year and didnât like it coz i couldnât understand many concepts and so left it within a year.I have read many codes from different users for different problems and also been active in community grups for learning.But couldn"t learn much. From past 2 years i have dedicated my time for coding and but i m still 1 starâŚrather than growth i had down fall from 3 star -> 1 starâŚI donât know what to read or study extra to reach atlst 5 starâŚCan any1 guide me what actually is required to solve atlst 5 problems in codechef long challenge.As i read about @ 7_star lebron guy,he made it to this far.please guide me what to learn so that i can solve more problems.I tried asking above 5 star guyies and they seems cocky and don"t wanna help coz they think if they had put effort to reach higher rank why teach other,let them struggle and sufferâŚ(I have contacted @murugurelinout (codechef users) and no help from him)
@lebron : if u can help now it wud be great else i will quit coding coz for me their is no growth as compared to others.
Seeing your post and attitude, I have no doubt they turned you down. Please, being genuinely humble and polite doesnât do harm.
PS: Competitive coding is asked in placement of majority of companies. Good luck leaving it 
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