I swear I'm pretty much 6ft (1.83m).

Nope

I love vim too. JetBrains IDEs are a runner up.

I'm doing good, how about you?

pet the dog ofc

Did your rating problems begin because of your wife, dog, or both?

I work at a startup called Impira in SF on database-like systems to extract and query information from assets (like scanned documents) using machine learning. I'm mostly working on the low-level data storage layer to store data and make it efficient to query.

One goal I have is to start streaming or screencasting more competitive programming content. I'll be posting some screencasts (probably AGC047 and CF R663 Div2) to YouTube shortly, and make sure to follow me at https://twitch.tv/ecnerwala to see when I go live!

Recently, I haven't had much of a strict training routine; I mostly do programming problems when I feel like it (which admittedly is pretty often). I do try to upsolve most of the problems from all the contests I do, but even then I skip annoying/"uninteresting" problems.

In high school, I did a lot of POI (Polish) problems.

Well I can answer this : D it's the reverse of his last name

It's the reverse of my middle name (my full name is Andrew Lawrence He). I pronounce it like "eck" (hard-k) — "nerwhal" (rhymes with narwhal) — "ah".

I wish I knew.

def p(x):print(x,flush=True);a[int(input())-1]+=x
a=[*map(int,input().split())];print('First');p(10**9);p(max(a)*3-sum(a));p(max(a)-min(a)>>1)

I think most of improving is practicing implementing and building familiarity with concepts. It's hard to say what difficulty level problem. I think to practice implementing, try to implement something that complicated enough that you'll make bugs, and then try to build muscle memory or other techniques to avoid those bugs. To learn concepts, probably try to solve problems that take you between 20 minutes and a few hours to solve.

Also, reaching purple may not be the right goal; you'll probably want to set a short-term goals that are more incremental.

I don't have too much to say about that; there are a lot of resources online if you want to learn about these things. I will say that competitive programming problems are pretty similar to the programming problems I've seen in interviews, so it's definitely a helpful bit of experience to have.

1. Still unknown. I can beat him in Distributed CodeJam Finals though!
2. My parents grew up in China, but I was born and raised in the US.

I live in California, USA.

Yeah that's pretty much right. I'll think for a while, especially if I feel like I'm still making progress. At some point, if I'm stuck or I no longer want to work on the problem (or at the end of the contest), I'll read the editorial or discuss the problem. I think it's important to go back and make sure you actually understand the structures of the solution and how they do and don't generalize. (How things don't generalize is a great way to understand what underlying structure is being relied upon.)

Then I usually try to implement it unless it's particularly uninteresting and annoying.

I really like being able to learn things from coworkers with experience in different areas than me. One thing that's a lot harder than competitive programming is that the codebases are larger and have to support a lot more collaboration, via things like good design patterns and good testing.

Probably a mix of many medium questions and some hard questions. I started off doing math olympiads, and I think they helped both understanding concepts and improving problem solving.

I'm 22, I started programming around age 14.

It's not my favorite topping or anything, but it's tasty, sure.

Some mix of practice and talent.

This is Codeforces, not tinder!

My favorite moment was probably solving towns at IOI 2015 in the last 15 minutes of the contest. That problem is so nice, and clutching it out felt so great.

I've started to really enjoy team-based ICPC rounds, it's great to be carried by teammates, and I have some fun implementing some of the more technical problems. It's always great to travel to onsite competitions and meet other contestants. IOI and CodeJam tend to have some very interesting math-y problems. One of those is probably my favorite.

Please Aaron, upload graph theory videos on your Youtube channel.

Recently, I've just been playing some video games like Celeste and doing some puzzle hunts.

Ask him and find out!

I don't have an SO right now.

I'm 22.

For sure. I actually really like the parts of competitive programming that are more like software engineering, like designing good interfaces and abstractions. I think that's one of the things that makes me pretty good at technical problems.

For ICPC 2019, we did several contest each week and spent a good amoout of our own time upsolving problems too.

It's probably winning Distributed Codejam, or 2nd place at ICPC.

I'll probably try to do some lockout soon, but no guarantees for now. I haven't actually watched Errichto's stream, but that does sound like a good idea; I'll check it out when I get some free time.

I've been using C++ since 2013. My favorite programming languages are probably C/C++, Go, Python, and maybe Rust (I haven't actually used Rust much though). I think Typescript is pretty cool, but I haven't used it much (also npm scares me).

Nope

This is a very good question... Why are there so many down votes?

1. I think you just have to keep pushing to do better; it's good to reflect a little on what changes you could make to do better in the future and then just move on to the next contest.

2. Depends on the topic, probably just read about it and make sure to practice on problems.

i like you.

6/10

I started off mostly with Codeforces and USACO training (both the training pages and past USACO problems).

To read about concepts, it depends on the concept; sometimes there are good resources on blogs like CF, other times you just have to read papers (which sucks). Asking peers for help is also good.

wtf cereal first for sure

cereal bowl first

Google is your friend.

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings

But seriously, all the top schools are good enough that you'll find good experience/opportunities at any of them, so don't take the rankings too seriously. You should probably care more about culture/your peers at those schools.

I really like building things, and there's a lot more opportunity to do that in industry.

Probably after you've stopped making progress, and at least 10-20 mins.

I studied CS at MIT, I did a little research but not much.

I've taken a couple breaks (see ~2017), mostly because I lost interest or had other things to do.

A mystery for more than 50 years...

1. I don't really workout, though I keep saying I should :(
2. Not really, I've watched parts of a couple but I wouldn't call myself a big anime person.
3. Tea, but I can't really take the caffeine from either.

I want to win an onsite round.

I have enough time for both; I don't spend all that much time on CP.

I'm a backend engineer.

I've started watching some more TV, mostly police procedurals like Person of Interest, White Collar, etc.

Yes

LGMs dont struggle with div2 Ds

Yeah for sure, I mean there was a time when I didn't know BFS.

Some, I've been playing Celeste, some Super Smash Bros. Melee, and I've recently tried playing Dead Cells.

Let's Say we currently have $$$i$$$ stones, then $$$\forall\; p_k \in P$$$, if $$$i-p$$$ was a losing state, then $$$i$$$ is a winning state.

For Example if $$$i = 0$$$ then, $$$p$$$ is a winning state since $$$0$$$ is a losing state. Hence the following recurrence holds,

Probably CF or AtCoder.

I like all my teammates equally.

It happens rarely that you go into TLE issues with vector. Maybe you don't know how to use them properly.