Google Code Jam 14

I was new to programming and I recently started coding in december 2013. I started my coding life with C as it was there in my coming semester in the college and I was told by some friends that it is one of the best programming language when it comes to speed and overall performance.

I recently started doing competitive programming and I got to know about this famous coding competition conducted yearly by the most awesome company Google. At first I thought that I am not good at competitive programming right now so, I will participate next year but then I registered for it as it was free and nothing was going in just registering for it. Then I kept practicing on the Online Judges and other sites like SPOJ,Codechef,Codeforces,Topcoder. In just about a month I was growing rapidly . I started doing some easy problems and as time passed on I also leveled up :) about a week before the Qualification Round is about to begun I started thinking that why wait for next year? I should give it a try. I took it very lightly like I will just participate and see what happens there in the contest.

Then the contest day came 11 April 2014. The contest started at 4:30 AM and I was awake till 5:00 AM just to see the level of the problems and after seeing them I slept and woke up at 10:30 AM . Just after waking up I jumped over my chair , started my laptop and began my day with some fresh coding problems prepared by Google. I started with the easiest one "The Magic Trick".Firstly, I was thinking that I won't be able to do this problem but then I took some time to figure out that it was a simple problem. I coded it and then I got stuck :( when I was submitting my solution I found out that they have an entirely different way to judge my solution as compared to the coding sites I mentioned above . I was a little depressed after seeing that but then I googled it out as to how to submit solution after spending some time I got the method, all what was needed is to use File Handling and after figuring it out I was feeling excited as this concept was used in my previous programming class in my college (I didn't get it during the lecture though :P ) but then I again did some search on how to use file handling and BINGO!!! within minutes I came with the working idea and submitted my solution successfully . I was on cloud 9 that time . At first I just couldn't believe on my eyes that my solution got accepted and I scored my first points I just can't describe that moment . After that I started thinking of submitting some more solutions and surprisingly I managed to solve the problem B also and scored the needed 25 points to place myself in the next round ROUND 1 . Woah!!! I cleared the qualification round that too in my first attempt . This was one of the happiest day of my life. I was ranked 15121 among 49066 people who registered for the contest from over 165 countries and 2929 in my country .Later that day I called up my parents to tell them about this achievement and they were also happy to hear such a great news.

My friends also congratulated me and encouraged me to do well in the next round as well .

 I know that next round will not be an easy one. I practiced almost daily for the round 1A and see the round is just about to begun in an hour. I will give my best shot at this and see what happen there in the coding arena .