For all those wondering why a 5th year student would blog about top coder.......My office uses Java as the primary language. I had to learn Java and what better way then spending a few days on TopCoder. Here are some of the highlights of my top coder fling
I took my sweet time to solve problems and i always got scores of 190/250 , 350/500 etc. My solutions were correct but i still got average scores. I thought this had to do with my running times.....then i coded very optimised stuff. Surprisingly my scores went down even further.
Troubled, irritated and almost pissed I asked Harry(ankur jaiswal) what the problem might be. he told me I was taking too long to code the problems. WTF! TopCoder bitches didn't say anythin abt time! Next time i coded pretty quickly and the result 250/250, 499.45/500 and 1094.05/1100. Muhahhahhahahah.
I know it's stupid that I have started using TopCoder so late in life. But better late then never.
And I have also developed a liking for java. The language is pretty neat, clean and quick. Most of the people I saw on topcoder were using either cpp/java. I think we have a case for java to be taught in some ITWS course.
PS: The annual India today college rankings should be out soon. I hope IIIT has improved it's rank. If it hasn't, expect a post filled with rants about how India today and it's ranking procedure suck :P
7 comments:
I think unless you are a super human, you can't solve any 250 pointer in 250.00 points. Which means you take about 10 seconds to view the problem, code the solution and submit it. pretty unbelievable !!!!!. To measure real scores , maybe you can try participating in a real competition instead of trying in practice rooms.
You are right. Actually the 250 point problem was the caeser cipher problem. I already had the code with me from some other project. Just copied and pasted it :)
As far as competitions are concernted they are for coding enthusiasts like you Mr.Anon :P I was just temporarily treading on unfamiliar grounds!
its good that your are spending your time to do this top coder stuff... but i am not sure whether it teaches you java or not. you may learn the use of some few basic libraries ... but i am afraid that is not real java.
i don't know if its a problem with me but i find it difficult to program in higher level languages like java/python without their documentation. you actually never know what all they provide unless you look at documentation and its not really possible to remember all the stuff they provide.
Yes you do need documentation if ur coding on vim. If you use an IDE like eclipse(which you always will in the industry) you dont have to remember all the classes and function prototypes. Auto completion will do your job 99% of the times. And now I have gotten used to all the functions and classes and their methids and don't even need an IDE. Still all you people out there: Stop Coding on Vim ! Go, get an IDE!
Hi,
Nice, you started with TopCoder.
Anyways,
1) "WTF! TopCoder bitches didn't say anythin abt time!" -
They seem to have mentioned everything clearly
here .
2) "Next time i coded pretty quickly and the result 250/250, 499.45/500 and 1094.05/1100. Muhahhahhahahah.
"
I am pretty sure even Petr ( Highest ever rated Topcoder ) never coded that fast. If you really did that in real time, you must be exceptional , I must say :) .
3) "The language is pretty neat, clean and quick" - QUICK !!! I doubt that.
4) "I think we have a case for java to be taught in some ITWS course" - I agree. I heard that they were reframing the course structure. Lets hope they include java somewhere in the course structure.
@ anshuman
Java is *clean* and *quick*. If you code like a caveman in Vim then yes it *will* take forever. Try eclipse. It's fast. You can save modules and reuse them later very easily. As kulbir said in a previosus comment you need either documentation with such a high level language or you need a good IDE.
The next time coding included problems were luckily previously known. I haven't been able to match such scores again in practice!
Infact I have gone back to sucking all over again!
@sharl by quick he meant the performance .. not the time to write the code
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