I am currently in USACO Silver but considering my CF performance I will probably ICP to gold in one contest. According to multiple sources my CF rating corresponds to high gold or low platinum, but I still don't feel very confident in my USACO abilities.

This blog is directed towards people who are in USACO platinum or camping. If you are not in either then you can still comment if you have something useful to say. I'm willing to bet most people with a rating below 1600 don't have much useful to say.

I know these advice blogs are redundant but I could not find much about this. Most advice is about to start but there's nothing when you're far beyond starting.

So here are my questions:

1. What did you do to practice? Currently I am doing USACO guide gold problems I feel like doing and will eventually start doing random actual USACO gold problems. Should I be doing something more focused? Should I try oj.uz?
2. How to practice implementation? The only thing I could think of is putting some pressure on myself to implement faster. Did it just come naturally from experience?
3. How do you keep yourself disciplined? I often struggle with this.
4. Did you do anything outside of competitive programming that helped?
5. Is there a significant difference in the problem solving part of CF and OI problems? I know OI problems require more implementation, but is there a different mindset/skillset when it comes to dealing with the problem?
6. Do the roaches in the dorms taste good?
7. Am I asking the wrong questions? Should I just shut up and do the 30 most recent 2000 problems?

Please don't comment "solve more problems and listen to twice" I promise I'm trying (except I don't listen to twice)

The title of the blog is completely original and not taken from anywhere else. Also don't take this blog that seriously its kind of a brain dump lmao

That's right the annoying kid you see comment on literally every blog and thinks he's him got to funny blue rating and I know what most sheeple are going to ask "how? 7 months? from nothing?" please hold your sc3developer orzes for a later occasion I already get glazed enough

So what is the magical strategy to get to funny blue rating? Just solve hard problems (I know crazy take right), I didn't really do random problems I did recent ones I found interesting up to 2100 difficulty, didn't implement a lot of them 😭 😭 😭 But in reality I just farmed rating from div3 (how the hell was my last perf 2200, also the tree problem from 1107 is the easiest 1700 of all time) probably would still be ~1500 max without it I've only gotten div2 expert perf once and that was when I was green lol

Anyways if you want real advice, most of the stuff I could say gets reiterated all the time and you should probably know if you aren't brand new (wow really??? read the -is-this-fft- blog???) but the one (somewhat) original thing I have is don't listen to low rated (up to your interpretation, but at least <1400) people's advice, cm+ put a lot of valuable information out there. Also don't farm 800s come on this should be obvious

Rating deflation is heavily exaggerated and rating is still a good measure of skill (even if lower than before), not chatgpt's fault you can't solve div2c. Might make a full blog about this someday

Sorry for kinda ranting about how epic and awesome I am for 3 paragraphs im actually happy about this even though I got it from farming div3

I would like to thank everyone except juicetin.kim

No, Codeforces didn't get "hacked"

Just because you got random notifications doesn't mean there's anything that really happened

It's just some dude that put everyone in a contest and sent notifications through that

It is safe to submit code, post blogs, etc; if there was really an issue div2 today would be delayed

Notice how most of the people freaking out about it are <1400 rating... and so is the supposed "hacker"

Gotta give a shoutout to 79XD for being a great attention seeker and fear mongerer, you should be a public figure

Modernizing the Codeforces Website

this post is a joke, wish i didnt have to put this up here but some people take things too seriously

As we all know, Codeforces is the greatest online judge of all time. However, the website is severely outdated, without much thought put into UI or UX. The website is far too usable, and it clearly lacks modern design principles. Therefore, in this thread, I will propose changes to modernize Codeforces and make it on par with other websites of the time.

Switch to React library

React is the greatest web framework- I mean "library", used by many large companies such as in the Windows start menu (???). Due to its widespread usage, this clearly means that it must be used by Codeforces, and also because the junior developer where I work who doesn't know what binary search is said it's good. It has absolutely no issues with speed. We will use this library to facilitate our improvements.

Native integration of AI

If there is one technology in recent times that has captured the Internet, it is obviously AI. Since we all know how useful AI is and how it is definitely not shoved into random places by tech bros claiming it's the future, we need to integrate it into Codeforces. Add an AI chatbot into the bottom right corner that constantly is on your screen and has a red circle with "1", and use AI to evaluate code instead of test cases. We will also add an AI code helper during practice AND contest. AI agent AGI vibe coding innovation deep learning workflow cloud. Are you happy yet stockholders?

Reorganization of Problemset page

The Problemset page is overwhelming to users, presenting them with many choices with little detail. We can streamline this process by showing the user one problem at a time, allowing the user to swipe down if they are not interested, going to a new problem. The problems shown will be catered by an algorithm based off of the user's interest. Do not ask how the data is collected for this algorithm.

Home page reorganization

The home page is now the For You page, and will show content catered to the user by the same algorithm as the Problemset page. It will also include the blog posts that currently stand on the home page. To be honest I don't know what an FYP page looks like I don't use any short form content. Whatever makes shareholders happy

Removal of Catalog and Edu pages

Education is scary. We must stick to AI generated videos and misinformation. Therefore, we will follow in the footsteps of Microsoft by removing our equivalent of a library. You will ask our proprietary AI which is just a ChatGPT wrapper for information. We will also remove a bunch of other random nice things because we hate you.

Monetization

Codeforces is currently unprofitable and relies on sponsors to stay up and running. We will add monetization to the website in order to gain profit by ourselves. The more profit, the better. We will do this in two ways: advertisements and Codeforces Premium.

Advertisements

We will add completely noninvasive advertising to Codeforces in order to gain extra profit. Anyone is allowed to submit an ad regardless of what it is advertising, following in the footsteps of websites like YouTube and Facebook. Before submitting, it will be required to watch a 30 second unskippable ad. In our new scrolling feature, 1/2 of the problems will be ads and it will be difficult to differentiate between ads and real problems. This will allow for optimal profit.

Codeforces Premium

Codeforces Premium is a new subscription that will be available for $11.99 USD a month. It will also carry a $80.00 USD cancellation fee because we said so. Here are the benifits of Codeforces Premium:

• Profile customization and access to formatting in blogs
• 25% increased time limits, memory limits, and contest points
• 25% reduced contest time penalty
• Ability to upload code files larger than 2KB cough cough Discord
• Remove a bunch of random free features and stick them in here I guess
• Use a very outdated ChatGPT model instead of an extremely outdated one

There will also be a Codeforces Premium Lite subscription for $6.00 USD a month, which is the same but objectively worse and an excuse to make Codeforces Premium more expensive.

Conclusion

In this blog, I have proposed many beneficial changes that will modernize Codeforces and make it more profitable. None of the users will hate this whatsoever, and everyone will be happy that their favorite site is modernized. While this still lacks essential features for a modern website, such as a battle pass, it is still a huge step in the right direction. I hope MikeMirzayanov and the rest of the Codeforces dev team will consider adding these proposed changes.