Around a month back in January when I was having semester end examinations, It was on the day I returned home after completely destroying being destroyed by COMP exam I got a break of 5 days until my IoT exam.
So unlike all the normal people I did not want to enjoy my vacation flying kites or roaming out rather I decided to watch a web series named “Alice in the borderland” as my friend said it’s better than squid game, So I wanted to know if all of that is true and I started watching this what I call a good series,
It was good thrilling intense suspense and unlike squid game where you need luck to win here you would need brain to win.
End of promotions, The point here being that when I was watching it I get a call from a friend of mine with whom it has been ages since we talked, So I answer the call and he aska “Bhai tujhe CP pata hai kya”.
I obviously said “NAH, Kya hai woh” for which he goes “DSA pata hai na !!!”(I am done with “for which he goes” and “then I go like” , Below is the summary of the call 🙂)
So on that day he basically said me what Competitive Programming(CP) was, He said It’s DSA but competitive, The same diff between boards and JEE(sorry for the PTSD that might be caused by this) but unlike JEE, questions in DSA and CP are not much different and he also said how Companies see your CP rating and shortlist you,
Basically it was quite a “WOAHHHHHHHHHHHH BENCHOOOOO” call for me where he shared his CP experience and wanted me to start it too. I told him that my semester is almost going to end i will start it ASAP it ends.
So I was waiting for my semester exams to end, not for taking a break or to enjoy the 4 yeah FOUR days of winter break that i got, But to start CP
On the day 3 of the 5 day break that I got before my IoT exam I was scrolling Spotify, YES Spotify(I like listening to things rather watching) I found a Ted Talk by Josh Kaufman Titled “The First 20 hours- How to learn anything” In which he basically talks shi- about how to learn things faster and save your time (You can watch it if you want to, it’s available on YouTube, I personally felt that was 6/10)
BUT BUt But………………. Can I do something with this? Yes you thought it Correctly, Why not implement this when I learn CP and record the First 20 hours of CP journey and see how it goes
And that’s exactly why I am writing a blog about it today
(Spoiler: It will be super fun here after)
Finally, Exams are done, YAY!!! Can’t believe that Semester 3 ended already, It was so fast!, So fast that I still use the same pen that I took at the start of this semester( Okay, that was just a lie that I created just to use as a metaphor)
But yeah, Now, It was time to start CP (Endgame Theme in the background)
To start off we would require a language I mean a coding language to start, I had options like Python, Java, C or C++ to choose from, I know C and Python already but I also knew that Python Isn’t fast and C isn’t that good for CP which leave me with two options C++ or Java.
After so many discussions about whether to choose java or C++ and watching tons of videos of regarding it I choose to go with “C++”