Hello there. I am writing this blog to share with you my experience on being Expert in 5 months and to help people who want to imporve their skills in Competitive Programming and even for those who want to start in this field.
And now, let’s start with some important tips from my point of view :
• Set your own goals : The good spirit is to fix goals to achieve, for me my goal was to be the first Tunisian who achieve ICPC. And before ICPC, I must be qualified to ACPC (Africa & Arab Collegiate Programming Championship). So I worked hard in the first 4 months, and I was qualified to ACPC by having the 3rd Place in TCPC (Tunisian Collegiate Programming Contest). And to be honnest, it was unexpected for me. But it happens.
• You should like what you are doing : If you like a subject, you would be good at it.
• while(true) { practice_and_never_give_up () ; }
• Select the problems according to the topics you are targeting : This will be very helpful for you during the practice.
• Learn new data structures and algorithms : learning new data structures and algorithms (like DFS, BFS, Dijkstra ect ..) will help you to improve your skills. Also, some maths skills can help you to solve some problems faster (Number theory, combinatorics, ect …)
• Avoid easy problems : Beginners' problems are a waste of time for who have mastered the basics of competitive programming.
• Focus on your performance during contests : don’t look for the scoreboard during the contest. Foncus on your performance and try to solve the problems efficiently. You will sometimes encounter a few defeats and even have a low rating, never mind, it’s normal, try to know your weaknesses and fix them.
• Check editorials if you failed : Sometimes you will spend hours trying to find a solution for your problem; in this case you read some lines from the editorial and keep trying again in the problem until you solve it. Even if you can’t solve it, don’t worry, you can read the solution and understand the trick, then re-solve the problem by yourself again.
I hope those tips help you. I want to thank Mtaylor and ziedom for inspiring me and helping me during my trainings.
