UVa 11340: Newspaper, despite being ranked at only Level 2 difficulty on uHunt, turned out to be rather tricky. Apparently others thought so too, judging by the 11 pages (151+ posts) of discussion on the UVa OJ message board. Many of the message board posts focus on the characters used in the test input. The […]
ContinueThe Long Game
The theory of deliberate practice is a popular starting point for online article writers. I subscribed to an alert for the term, and I generally get a few results every day (of varying quality). Its popularity isn’t surprising. Deliberate practice offers a process that anyone can use to get better, assuming they are willing to […]
ContinueLessons from Competitive Programming 3, Chapter One
This post is part of a series of commentaries covering each chapter of Competitive Programming 3 by Steven and Felix Halim. You can find the rest of the posts in the series by visiting my CP3 post category. Many of the problems in the UVa Online Judge are taken directly from past ACM-ICPC contest problems. […]
ContinueLessons from uHunt Chapter One
This post is part of a series that considers what can be learned from the problems in each chapter of uHunt, a tool for competitive programming practice. You can find the rest of the posts in the series by visiting my uHunt post category. This week, I submitted the solution to the last of the […]
ContinueProductivity Habits
When you’re working on a serious learning project, especially if you’re applying deliberate practice techniques, it’s essential to have a set of core habits that you can rely on. Deliberate practice is intended to be a demanding process (see elements #4 and #5 from the linked post). This is good because it makes you push […]
ContinueWhat Are the Important Problems of Your Field?
Do these questions sound familiar? What are the important problems of your field? What important problems are you working on? If what you are doing is not important, and if you don’t think it is going to lead to something important, why are you … working on it? They come from a 1986 speech by […]
ContinueBuilding Mathematical Thinking Skills
When people hear the term competitive programming, they naturally think about programming contests and rankings. People who are encountering the term for the first time are just using the literal meaning, while those who are familiar with the topic think about the top competitors that they hear a lot about. But someone who is just […]
ContinueThe Missing Piece of the Computer Science Curriculum
Despite the increasing availability of alternative options such as online learning sites and coding boot camps, many students who are interested in programming still pick the traditional approach: getting a Computer Science degree. If you plan to do academic research, a degree is really the only option. But for someone who wants to get a […]
ContinueWhat You Can Learn from Easy Programming Puzzles
When you start solving programming puzzles like those on uHunt Chapter 1, what are you learning about? The obvious answer is that you’re learning about competitive programming. After all, uHunt has a companion textbook called Competitive Programming, and many programming puzzle sites are associated with the competitive programming community, or even run their own contests. […]
ContinueHow to Learn an Algorithm
If you want to get better at programming, you need to get better at algorithms. In some ways, that statement is tautological. To quote Computer Science pioneer Niklaus Wirth, Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs. But besides the algorithms that you write yourself, it’s also worth studying well-known algorithms such as those taught in introductory […]
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