Learning the hard way

So, now I've decided to push my coding skills to a new level. This week I was solving Div 2 250 problems on Topcoder . On an average I am doing 3-4 problems on it spending around 30-60 minutes on each of them trying to understand them and coding them.If I get stuck at something I am reading the editorials of the problem to further check my solution or to get new ways to do the same problem.This not only improves my coding skills but gives me a different approach to do the same question also.As of now I am not participating in SRMs and Codeforces contests  because I want to first sharpen my axe for a good amount of time and then cut the tree smoothly rather than cutting the tree with the blunt axe .

I am learning C++ these days.Its good to go with C++ when you have C basics with you.

Also this week I participated in Codechef's short contest and  managed to solve 2 problems . This was the first time when I could solve more than 1 problem on their contests and now I am ranked 1226 worldwide and 721 in my country in short contests.

I am certainly improving day by day . I can see that improvement as now I can think much more faster on how to solve a particular solution and I will continue to practice more and more..

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 . 

Open Source Software - A beginning

These days I am learning how to contribute to open source software .It is fun as well as challenging task as you get to know the source code of some exciting projects and in order to understand them you need to dive into the great pool of code snippet . Its really exciting(I am very much excited just to think of contributing to an existing project) when you use your programming skills to understand or find a bug in the project. I am learning how to use git and github so that I can also contribute towards the success of a project that I like.
I just can't wait to show my coding skills and increase the quality of the projects. So just stay tuned and see a great software developer rising ;)