NOTE: If any school student has participated in the contest and solved at least 2 questions, but not registered by filling the form, they may do so by 23:59 IST, 12 August 2018.
You will be given 7 problems to solve in 2.5 hours. The competition is open for all and rated for Div-2.
Top school students studying between classes VI-XII (or equivalent) in an Indian school will then be invited to the onsite finals to be held at Esya’18, the Technical Fest of IIIT-Delhi.
School Students, register here for onsite finals: bit.ly/PRCNJR18
Prizes worth Rs. 20000 for the top rankers in the onsite finals.
This is my first time hosting a contest, and that too a rated one! Hope you all like the problems!
The coding competition is the same for everyone. No distinction in terms of classes.
The online round will be conducted on 11th August as per the post above. Top X school students will be invited to IIIT-Delhi on 17th August for the onsite finals.
There are several problems on CodeChef available for practice. It is recommended to solve some problems for practice, to get a hang of the input/output format, and in general the concept of competitive programming, if you have no prior experience to that. You can also check out last year’s competition here: https://www.codechef.com/PROJ2017
The qualification for the onsite round is for the school students only. However, you can participate in the online round as it is open for all and rated for Div-2.
***1.Will the coding challenge be the same across classes or would vary as per the class the kid is studying in?***Focusing on coding inflates the importance of finding the “right” method to solve a problem rather than the importance of understanding the problem.I have a close friend who is a former Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest champion from Stanford. The greatest thing he taught me about his ACM championship days was the importance of understanding what problem you’re trying to solve.
You must ask yourself, “Do you even have one?” and “Can you apply the Feynman principle and explain it in a way that others can understand you?”
This friend told me that even in the elite schools, students read the prompt to the coding problem only once then immediately code.
The year my friend won the championship he learned something: even those from elite schools dove headfirst into complicated problems, with code as their only weapon.
Meanwhile, my friend wrote his code only after thoroughly understanding the problem. He used almost all the allotted time to think about the problem. He did not write code until minutes before the deadline.
He became a champion.
He knew that banging out code would not solve the problem, but cool, collected problem solving would.
An excessive focus on coding ignores the current plight of existing developers.The line between learning to code and getting paid to program as a profession is not an easy line to cross. Final thoughts
f becoming an engineer is what you want, don’t let me — or anyone, for that matter — get in the way of your goal. And don’t let traditional confinements like the educational system slow you down. There are no correct or incorrect ways to go about achieving your goals.
But don’t lose sight of reality while being charmed by our culture’s Silicon Valley romance. This field is not a get-out-of-debt-free card. You have to take the time to build your understanding of the field. You have to become comfortable with the fact that you are a problem-solver and not simply a “fill-in-framework-here” developer. You also must get used to the idea that at any moment you might need to learn a new framework or language, and that you will have to fight for a job if you don’t have formalized credentials.
Software engineering is a lucrative field, but the transformation from “coder” to “engineer” is challenging.