Deliberate practice techniques for software developers
Mastering the craft of programming can take many years, but what about learning enough to pass an interview?
How long had you been learning programming for until you were able to solve medium/hard problems on LeetCode? What about the easy ones? (answer)
I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.
There are so many competitive programming practice problems available online now that it can be hard to decide which one to work on next:
How do you determine which problem is suitable for you at your level in competitive programming? (answer)
I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.
Two top competitive programmers who used to submit their solutions in Java have recently made the switch to C++. But how did they do so well with Java in the first place?
How has Petr Mitrichev won so many competitive programming contests by using Java and not C++? (answer)
I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.
Companies aren’t looking for competitive programmers. But because of how interviews work, it can seem like they are. So Quora ends up with some odd questions:
Do I need to be a competitive programmer to work at one of the top tech companies? (answer)
I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.
A popular criticism of coding interviews is that candidates can cheat by looking up common questions and memorizing the answers. I don’t know if anyone has succeeded using that approach, but it doesn’t seem to me like it would work.
Is it possible to memorise the tricks of algorithm questions to crack the Google interview? (answer)
I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.
Long ago, I wrote an article about Profiling Java Programs with VisualVM. It can be interesting to analyze code to find performance bottlenecks. But for competitive programming solutions, it’s usually a losing battle. If you choose the wrong algorithm, no amount of micro-optimization will help.
What are ways to optimize programs? My algorithms are strong enough but I am having serious difficulties in optimizations. I wonder how people in Online Judges think so creatively. (answer)
I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.
People often use the term competitive programming to refer to any activity (besides homework) where programmers create solutions to made-up puzzles rather than real-world problems. For example, consider this Quora question: Which is the best online judge for competitive programming, HackerRank, HackerEarth or LeetCode? As Bohdan Pryshchenko points out in his answer, these three sites focus on interview practice, not competitive programming in the traditional sense. Their questions cover topics likely to come up in an interview. And although some of them host contests, those contests don’t consistently attract the strong contestants who regularly show up for Codeforces and Topcoder events.
When I’m writing Quora answers, I sometimes point out the difference between competitive programming and interview preparation if it’s relevant to the question. But while I’m always in favor of using terms correctly, I’m not sure how important this distinction is in the scheme of things. Consider that:
Coding interview questions require knowledge of topics like graphs, trees, and dynamic programming algorithms, all of which are used in competitive programming.
Participation in competitive programming tapers off quickly as the problems require more advanced algorithms. For example, see the bottom graph in this Quora answer. Red coders on Topcoder are a long tail at the high end of the rating distribution, while the bulk of the contestants are clustered in the large gray-green-blue area. At these levels, competitive programming questions use well-known algorithms, just like interview questions do.
Competitive programming owes most of its popularity to its association with coding interviews. If it was just about coders solving puzzles, it would be a niche activity even within the software engineering world.
As 2019 comes to a close, I’m continuing my tradition of reviewing posts from the past year. This year was divided into two halves. In the first half, I covered topics in discrete math, math for competitive programming, and math learning in general. In the second half, I changed my blog content approach. More on that later.
People debate how useful competitive programming practice is for getting better at real-world programming. But there’s one area where it definitely helps:
Why are people obsessed with competitive programming when it’s not used in real-world programming jobs? (answer)
Why is this post so short? Find the answer, and links to a blog table of contents, at A Summer 2019 Experiment.
To get better at solving coding interview problems, you have to solve a lot of coding interview problems. So a reasonable question to ask (though it’s hard to answer accurately) is:
How many LeetCode problems should I do? (answer)
Why is this post so short? Find the answer, and links to a blog table of contents, at A Summer 2019 Experiment.