A week full of algorithmic coding

Last sunday I participated in the round 1C of Google Code Jam 2014 and secured 4128 position after solving one small input problem ,that means I am out of my first ever GCJ participation . I am quite happy as well as satisfied with my performance in the competition as I am still in the early stages of learning phase I think my performance was good .

My performance in GCJ 14 at a glance -

Qualification Round - ranked 15128(Solved 3 problems)

Round 1A - 3624(without solving a single problem :P )

Round 1B - 6209(solved 1 ques)

Round 1C - 4128(solved 1 ques)

It may not look good but after knowing the fact that this performance was given by a person who learnt his first programming language just 5 months back!! it certainly looks good isn't it ?

I look forward to improve my algorithmic skills and I will make sure that I'll improve my performance in the next GCJ . 

Today my semester result got announced and I scored an 'Ex' 10/10 points in lab section of programming course and 9/10 'A' in Theory course .Good to see those letter grades in the grade sheet. :)

I was practicing binary search and top down approach(Dynamic Programming) these days .

I was amazed to see the power of simple algorithm of binary search thanks to the Topcoder tutorials. 

Algorithmic Coding Rocks!!!

Starting of summer vacation 2014

This week I was very busy in my end semester exams but I still participated in the round 1A of GCJ 2014 its a different story that I couldn't solve a single question but still I was trying for the whole 150 minutes to solve problems.Got a world rank of 3624 I think the problems were of good level that's why even after not solving a single question I landed up with this kind of rank.
 After a long time around 4 months I am again in my hometown ,it feels very nice to be in your home :) .

Participated in round 1B this sunday and I managed to solve 1 small input set problem but rest of them were not in my range(at this point of time).Secured a world rank of 6209.

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 .