We’ve had a gruelling ICPC season so far and here we are today to give you live updates from the last Indian ICPC regional of the year being held at Amrita University.
This is the largest regional in Asia with over 270 teams participating across 2 sites – Coimbatore and Amritapuri.
We are expecting the contest to begin in 5 minutes.
Every regional this year has had nail-biting finishes. Today’s contest is expected to be even more intense with a lot of top teams competing against each other.
UniverseIsDeterministic (CMI) with Rajat De in their team and GeometryIsLove (IITM) with Teja Vardhan Reddy in their team who were rank 1 and rank 2 respectively at the Kgp regional, are participating in today’s contest.
Far_Behind (IITD) who solved 3 problems in the last 1 hour at the Kgp regional to end up at rank 3 will also be participating today.
tesla_protocol (IIIT Hyderabad) led the ranklist for a long, long time in the Gwalior regional but ended up at rank 3 after a magnificent performance by BhayanakMaut and ButterRoti. They will be targeting a podium finish today as well.
Hold right there Sparky!! (IIT Roorkee) won the Kolkata regional with a great performance in the last 1 hour. Will they take it easy today as they already have a potential WF slot in hand or fight it out?
Other teams like Microwave-O(1), proofByAC and MexFlow, to name a few, have done well in previous regionals but haven’t made it to the top 3-4 ranks. They will be itching to get that WF slot today.
Public Ranklist – https://www.codechef.com/public/rankings/ACM18AMR
9:45 am: Contest has begun
9:47 am: Kimi no Na wa (IIT Roorkee) score the first AC, 2 mins 19 seconds into the contest.
9:52 am: 7 minutes into the contest, 121 teams have solved 1 problem.
The title of the first problem is – “Is it a Cakewalk problem”. It definitely seems to be one
9:54 am: bits please solve CNTFAIL – first team to solve 2 problems, now at Rank 1.
9:57 am: tesla_protocol submit ARMYFGT and so do MexFlow at a difference of 4 seconds. Let’s see if their submissions are correct…
Yes they are! tesla_protocol move to rank 2 and MexFlow move to rank 3 respectively with a time difference of 23 seconds.
tesla_protocol has a time penalty gap of 40 seconds with bits please who are at Rank 1 currently.
10:00 am: UniverseIsDeterministic gets a WA on ARMYFGT.
Most teams are using Python to solve ARMYFGT.
10:07 am: tesla_protocol solve CNTFAIL and lead the ranklist with 3 problems solved.
10:28 am: 37 teams have solved 3 problems so far. tesla_protocol leads the pack, proofByAC is at Rank 2 and Laila (IIT Roorkee) is at Rank 3.
10:31 am: Team “ForgotToWarmup” just got WA on a problem called “SAUNA”.
“Apt team name”, says Balajiganapathi from the judging panel.
10:36 am: UniverseIsDeterministic are the first team to solve PALPATH. They are now at Rank 1 and we have 4 problems solved in total.
GeometryIsLove submit AVLBLT aaaaand it’s correct! They immediately replace UniverseIsDeterministic at the top of the leaderboard.
10:38 am: dilliMetro solve MARTING1, their 4th problem. They replace GeometryIsLove at Rank1.
The last 3 minutes have been quite exciting.
10:42 am: Laila (IITR) solve their 4th problem with 0 penalties and now lead the pack.
10:52 am: Hold right there Sparky!! from IITR solve their 4th problem and are the first to solve ALFRED, the 7th problem of the contest. They are now at Rank 3.
10:58 am: UniverseIsDeterministic solve ALFRED. They have now solved 5 problems and are back at Rank 1.
11:01 am: GeometryIsLove solve SAUNA. They have now solved 5 problems are at Rank 2. 8 distinct problems solved.
11:04 am: DeathNote from IITB solve ALIENINV. A very interesting, mathy problem. 9 distinct problems solved.
11:13 am: Math_maniac solve BALSUB. 10 distinct problems have been solved in the contest.
11:19 am: tesla_protocol solve MARTING1 and take away the lead from UniverseIsDeterministic.
11:21 am: Hold right there Sparky!! solve MARTING1 and are now at Rank 1.
This is turning out to be a very competitive contest. It seems to be quite non-trivial to predict who the winner will be.
11:44 am: GeometryIsLove get TLE on PALPATH.
12.54 pm: Laila has seized the lead by solving their 8th problem!
12.55 pm: bits please has also solved their 8th problem pushing UniverseIsDeterministic to third place. UniverseIsDeterministic has got 2 WAs on REFORMS, but can they make a comeback?
1.16 pm: Team UniverseIsDeterministic has solved SAUNA and jumped back to rank 1!
1.18 pm: The CMI team’s lead was short lived as bits please have now secured rank 1 with their 9th problem
1.38 pm: bits please has strengthened their lead by solving their 10th problem ALIENINV
1.45 pm: The rank list is now frozen, but you can still predict your winners here: https://goo.gl/forms/ng8a7xKBujzNAPtl1
Team bits please from IIT Kanpur secured the first rank while Hold right there Sparky!! and Laila – both from IIT Roorkee – landed the 2nd and 3rd spot respectively. Congratulations to the winning teams!
It’s day 2 of ICPC Regionals in India and today’s competition is taking place at two sites: IIIT Pune and IIITM, Gwalior. Keep up with all the contest action here!
Live Ranklist: https://www.codechef.com/public/rankings/ACM18GWR#
10.53 am: It’s been roughly an hour since the #ICPCRegionals at #IITTPune and #IIITMGwalior began and Team BhayanakMaut have swept into an early lead with 4 problems solved! tesla_protocol from #IIITHyderabad are close behind also with 4 problems.
11:18 am: tesla_protocol from IIITH lead the ranklist with 5 problems solved. 6 teams have solved 4 problems now. BhayanakMaut from IIITD are at Rank 2 and have a 40 minute time penalty difference from bits please who are at Rank 3.
11:24 am: BhayanakMaut solve their 5th problem and move up to rank 2!! Merely 4 minutes of time penalty gap separates them from tesla_protocol.
Top 4 teams have 5 problems solved now.
We also have 4 school teams participating in today’s regionals – antipro, exun_coder, bipolar and codeup_017.
antipro from Bodhicariya Senior Secondary School, Kolkata have solved 3 problems and are at rank 18 currently.
11:34 am: tesla_protocol get their 6th correct submission and extend their lead over BhayanakMaut.
They have had an incorrect submission on another problem (SIRUSERI) for a long time now. That problem would most likely be the next one they would target ACing.
Their solution seems to be almost there, but they seem to have made a minor mistake. The solution involves very less code, so once they spot the error they should be able to fix their code and submit quickly.
Time penalties could prove to be very costly in such a close contest. They should test out their solution rigorously before submitting!
11:40 am: Ranks 2 to 9 now have 5 problems solved.
11:45 am: tesla_protocol get another WA on SIRUSERI! They have 2 WAs on this problem now.
bits please solve THSTRS, their 7th submission and are now at Rank 5.
bits please, ButterRoti and Supercalifragilistic have solved 6 problems each now.
bits please is 20 minutes behind tesla_protocol. If they avoid WAs in the next 20 mins and get an AC, they could displace tesla_protocol from the top of the ranklist.
11:48 am: BhayanakMaut solve 6 problems and land at rank 3.
What a contest this is turning out to be! Top 5 teams have 6 problems solved and are separated just by time penalty.
11:54 am: tesla_protocol solve SIRUSERI, their 7th correct submission.
BhayanakMaut AC their 7th problem within 2 seconds of tesla_protocol!! They are separated by just 1 minute of time penalty now! Is this competitive programming or Formula 1?!
“bits please have 10 minutes to get their 7th AC to get to Rank 1.” – Jatin Yadav
12:02 pm: Persistent Matroid (IIT Kgp) solve 7 problems and are now at Rank 3.
With 3 hours to go in the contest, 7 problems are solved and 4 problems remain unsolved.
12:11 pm: bits please get WA on THSTRS. They also got a TLE before that.
12:18 pm: tesla_protocol solve WALKTREE, their 8th accepted submission.
12:26 pm: BhayanakMaut solve WALKTREE as well. They had a very very minor implementation bug that led to a WA. They are at Rank 2 now with a time difference of 39 minutes from tesla_protocol.
12:32 pm: ForTheDamagedCode from NITK are the first team to solve GAMEOFNUM. They have 6 problems solved in total now.
ButterRoti solve their 8th problem and are now at Rank 3.
12:34 pm: bits please solve their 8th problem 2 minutes after ButterRoti and are at Rank 4.
12:49 pm: BhayanakMaut solve 9 problems and take away the lead from tesla_protocol!
1.18 pm: BhayanakMaut are in the lead followed by ButterRoti from IIT Patna and bits please. Each team has solved 9 problems
1.26 pm: ButterRoti is now in 2nd place! Can they steal the top spot?
1:50 pm: BhayanakMaut seem to have a nearly correct solution for POLYSTR. Jatin Yadav and Animesh point out that they aren’t clearing their dp table and that’s their only bug! They have been debugging it for 15+ minutes now.
The setters are going to submit their code in practice with an extra statement to clear the table to see if it would AC.
1:54 pm: “Their solution passes by memsetting the dp table.” – Jatin and Animesh
Let’s see how much time BhayanakMaut takes to figure that out.
2:00 pm: The leaderboard will freeze in 10 minutes from now. We have 6 teams with 9 problems solved at the moment. Share your ranking predictions in the comments!
2.02 pm: tesla_protocol is back at rank 2 and have pushed ButterRoti to rank 3. BhayanakMaut maintains their lead.
2:07 pm: BhayanakMaut solve POLYSTR! They are at rank 1 with 10 problems solved now.
tesla_protocol seem to have a O(N^2) DP solution for POLYSTR too.
2:10 pm: Ranklist is now frozen.
The contest has ended. You can view the final ranklist here.
Congratulations to the winning teams BhayanakMaut from IIIT Delhi, ButterRoti from IIT Patna and tesla_protocol from IIIT Hyderabad!
Stay tuned for updates from the next ICPC Regionals at GNIT Kolkata and UIET Kanpur.
Our 66th Lunchtime took place on November 24 and it was a showdown to remember with a major rank list shake-up! Keep reading to read who gained ratings and who lost them in the November Lunchtime.
Leading the pack in Div 1 was uwi, who is presently ranked number 1 in Japan and number 5 globally. Following our 100th Cook-Off, we mentioned in our Contest Recap that uwi was less than a hundred rating points short of a spot in the global top 5. Looks like, uwi took up the challenge and dethroned China’s ACRush to claim the world number 5 spot. But ACRush is a regular in our Long Challenges, stay tuned to see if he makes a comeback next month.
Other notable mentions in Div 1 are zemen from Russia who moved to 5-star status in this competition and rns5 from North Korea who went from 5 stars to 6. natsugiri, also from Japan, rounded out the top 4, all of whom scored 500. rns5 has risen rapidly through the rating system, gaining a whopping 6 stars since joining CodeChef in August this year. He needs just about 182 rating points to join another, rns4 another celebrated Kim Il-sung University student, in the 7-star club.
In Div 2 mzuev from Russia, took the lead going from 2 to 3 stars in the process. Close behind was xuzijian629 from Japan who was participating in a CodeChef contest for the very first time and made a rating jump of 275 points, which is the maximum jump possible! He promises to be a coder to watch out for. Dubai based antrikshh claimed the third spot, with Indonesia’s sidiqha in 4th place. While no Indians made it to the top 10 in Div 1, 4 Indians secured spots in Div 2’s top 10. A huge shoutout to its_ulure, mindjolt, radon12 and shubham698.
School students were well-represented in the November Lunchtime Div 1 with 9 of them earning places in the top 20. The best performers were tmwilliamlin from Taiwan who was at rank 5, farhod_farmon from Tajikistan at rank 7, and Ukraine’s adalbert at rank 8. Div 2’s best performing school students were its_ulure from India at rank 5, arafat_01 from Kazakhstan at rank 9, and fake_here from China at rank 15.
Special mentions go to female coders amina283 from Azerbaijan and mh755628 from Bangladesh, both of whom made it to the Div 1 top 100. In Div 2, it was hui_yin from Hong Kong and India’s own viralivora who reached the top 100.
Joining xuzijian629 on the list of users who made sizeable rating jumps are mzuev from Russia and tyakennikku from China who improved their rating by 233 points each. Indonesian sidiqha enjoyed a rating jump of 209 points while India’s own its_ulure from West Bengal, increased his rating by 201 points.
The highest participation this month came from India, followed by Bangladesh and Ukraine. India’s National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra and Jaypee Institute of Information Technology had the most participants in this Lunchtime. If you’d like to spread the word about competitive programming in your school or college, start by creating or joining a CodeChef Campus Chapter today.
Probability (PPAP) emerged as the least solved problem of both Divisions with no successful submissions in Div 2 and just 7 in Div 1. Event (EVENT) was the most solved problem of Div 2 with 769 successful submissions out of a total of 5738 while in Div 1, Beats and Pieces (BPS) got 169 successful submissions from a total of 576. Check out the editorials for this Lunchtime’s problems here.
As we conclude this recap, we tip our hats to our problem setting panel:
Setter: Rehim Memmedli (nots0fast)
Tester: AmirReza PoorAkhavan (arpa)
Statement verifier: Jakub Safin (xellos0)
Editorialist: Hussain Kara Fallah (deadwing97)
Translators:
Mandarin Translator: Hu Zecong (huzecong)
Vietnamese Translator: Team VNOI (khanhptnk)
Russian Translator: Fedor Korobeinikov (gomelfk)
Bengali Translator: Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope)
Hindi Translator: Akash Srivastava (devils_code)
And as always, many thanks to our problem panel admin Hasan Jaddouh (kingofnumbers) whose hard work helped us pull the contest together.
The November Cook-Off may be behind us, but the excitement still hasn’t left our system! This was CodeChef’s landmark 100th Cook-Off and we rewarded not only our top performers but also a bunch of participants, selected randomly, to show our gratitude. Keep reading to know what went down during this historic Cook-Off.
Over in Div 1, Japan’s number 1 competitive programmer uwi, stole the show by securing the first rank while the second spot went to India’s own rahuldugar. During this Cook-Off IITian rahuldugar increased his rating to 2484, he only needs a few more rating points to join the exclusive 7-star club. We’re rooting for you, Rahul! uwi, meanwhile, has enjoyed top billing in Japan (national rank 1) and a global rank of 8 for a while and only needs around 70 rating points to steal ACRush’s spot in the global top 5. We’ll be waiting to see if he takes up the challenge. (UPDATE: We may have inadvertently predicted a huge rank shift for uwi! Wait for our Lunchtime recap to know more!)
Also in Div 1, artistmusicant and ll931110 who were at ranks 3 and 4 respectively, both graduated to 5 stars during this Cook-Off. artistmusicant was notably the only female programmer in the top 10 during this Cook-Off so hope she inspires all the girl-coders out there!
grikukan from Russia stirred things up in Div 2 where he earned the first rank. This University student is teetering on the brink of Div 1 with a rating of 1786, but he’s had a tumultuous journey through CodeChef’s contests slipping from 6 stars to 3 stars last year, and nobody knows better than us that anything can happen in a CodeChef contest! petergendy4 from the US swooped into second place with a score of 2, and in the process went from 3 stars to 4.
Among school-level coders, sanroylozan from Hungary, evpipis from Greece and adhyyan1252 from India were a cut above the rest. These school students are all 6-star coders, we hope they can all graduate to 7 stars soon and give the more experienced coders some competition.
There were no seismic shifts in this month’s Div 1 and Div 2 order, but 61 users from Div 2 graduated to Div 1 while over double that number (137) fell back to Div 2 from Div 1. Just a reminder that in the word of competitive programming, you can’t get too comfortable with your rating! You have to keep practising and competing to stay on top.
As far as participation goes, India had the most participants with over 2000 coders taking part in the Cook-Off. The United States and Bangladesh were tied in second place with 23 participants each while 9 Cook-Off coders were from Russia.
The problem Truth and Dare, emerged as the most solved problem with 1781 successful submissions out of a total of 4355 while Data Pipelines was the least solved with 0 successful submissions in Div 2. In Div 1 Elephants in a Pond got just 1 successful submission. You can check out editorials for all the Cook-Off problems here.
We conclude this recap with a big thanks to our problem setting panel:
And an extra special thanks to our problem panel admin Hasan Jaddouh (kingofnumbers) who went above and beyond to make our 100th Cook Off memorable for everyone!
The November Long Challenge was an exciting one and we’re reliving all the contest chaos through our official November Challenge Recap.
Our standout coders this month were ACRush (Div 1) and xhm154 (Div 2), both from China who aced the Long Challenge with scores of 800 each. In the Division 2 category, a notable mention goes to browni3141 from the US who made an ambitious leap from 1 star to 3 stars by securing the 2nd spot with a score of 799.199. Div 2’s 3-star coders zhouzhendong and zhouyuyang had snagged early leads, but while they were ousted from the top spots, they each earned a star and moved to the 4-star club. Interestingly, all of the top 10 participants in Div 2 earned at least a star in this contest, so Div 1 regulars had better watch their backs!
Meanwhile, in Division 1, most of the key players in the top 10 retained their existing status with some notable exceptions. samjia2000 from China and wmoise from the USA, both earned the elusive ticket into the red 7-star club. wmoise is now ranked 8th in the USA and 83rd worldwide, while samjia2000 has a country rank of 16 and a global rank of 75. But as we all know, the contests giveth and the contests taketh away! We hope the new entrants are prepared to fight for their spots! We also had North Korean rns5, the lone coder with the purple band, who battled 6 and 7-star competitors to add that coveted 5th star to his band with a score of 799.686.
Shoutout to our top ranking school students whzzt, peehs_moorhsum and samjia2000 who all secured spots in the Div 1 top 10 with scores of 780 and above. In Div 2, 4 of the top 10 ranked coders were students: xhm154, howarli, zhouzhendong and zhouyuyang. These rising stars will soon be keeping experienced coders on their toes!
Our homegrown coders also found themselves in the top 10 in both Div 1 and 2 categories. yash_chandnani from Jaipur retained his 7 stars and secured the 5th spot in the Div 1 rank list with a score of 799.513. In Div 2, halberdier secured the third place while thefear from Uttarakhand and Kolkata’s rv_619 landed the number 9 and 10 spots respectively.
A whopping 7421 coders increased their ratings in the November Challenge, and 301 Div 2 coders graduated to Div 1 with ab_initio from the USA who made a significant 186 point rating jump while India’s very own coder3101 from Jharkhand earned 176 rating points during the Long Challenge. Female programmers from India made their presence in the competition felt with 4 coders making rating jumps of over 200. Mumbai’s ziggywiggy led the pack with a rating increase of 217. Among school students, cunbidun from Vietnam increased his rating by 233 points while ilionoid from Kolkata, India saw a rating increase of 219. The Div 1 pool just got a lot bigger since 307 coders graduated from Div 2 to Div 1 following the contest. Salute to eriktillema from the Netherlands who earned 228 to make this leap.
As for the problems, “Chef and Difficult Contests” ironically emerged as the most solved problem with 9774 successful submissions while Max Digit Tree and Chef and Equations saw just 17 successful submissions each. You can check out editorials for all the Long Challenge problems here.
We conclude this recap with a big thanks to our problem setting panel:
And an extra special thanks to our problem panel admin, Misha Chorniy (mgch) whose efforts in the Chef’s Kitchen make our monthly contests fun for everyone!
At CodeChef, we take pride in our innovative community that is constantly striving to create a better environment for all of us. In recent times, we received a lot of requests to open up our API so that our users could develop apps that would benefit the entire community and add new functionalities to the CodeChef platform.
Finally, on the 27th of August 2018, we launched our API and held our very first Hackathon – the CodeChef API Hackathon powered by Alibaba Cloud. This hackathon was held in the spirit of innovation; we already knew that our community was enthusiastic about using CodeChef data to create new resources for each other.
It brings us great joy to share with you the wonderful and innovative entries we received for the contest. It was not an easy task choosing between them, especially since we had to add an extra set of resources due to the sheer number of responses that we received, but we’re finally here with the list! Below is a glimpse of some of them. Check out the entries below and let us know what you think!
All the winners will win collective cash prizes worth $2400, internship interview opportunities at CodeChef, t-shirts and more as mentioned on the contest page.
On to the winners!
1) Chef’s Arena (unsigned_joy)
Team Members:
Alfarhan Zahedi (alfarhanzahedi)
Jatin Pandey (jatinpandey)
Chef’s Arena is a web application designed to give programmers a competitive environment while practising problems. It’s a fast and responsive application with many exciting modes of practice to help users perform better in a contest and prepare for prestigious contests like the ICPC.
2) Virtual Contest (poor_villagers)
Team Members:
Hasan (hasan356)
Vishwanath (vishwanath45)
This app lets you play CodeChef contests in a Virtual environment, those who have played virtual contests on Codeforces would be aware of it.
Virtual Contests enables the users to run the past contests in a special mode that would imitate a real competition. It allows users to get the experience of a real contest while competing in a virtual environment.
3) Virtualizer (sd_1998)
Team Members
Heramb Patil (herambpatil98)
Jugal Rawlani (fatherofall)
Virtualizer allows users to run past CodeChef contests in an environment that imitates a real competition. Features like real-time successful submissions help a user to identify the difficulty of questions. Virtualizer also provides a user with their overall global, country and organization rank and many more features.
The developers have also included an option to create a custom contest which would consist of questions of various difficulty based on the analysis of the type of questions attempted by a user. They have currently included all the past LTIME and COOKOFF contest. They will be extending this feature to include past ICPC regional contests.
4) CodeChef Social (chhole_bhature)
Team Members
Tanmay Datta (tanmaydatta)
Haider Ali (scoobybutter)
Features:
Available on both iOS and Android
Friends – Add/remove/update friend sets .
News feed – Content info and friends activity .
Chat – Real time chat with any CodeChef Social user.
Notifications – Reminders and live contest submissions of friends in live contest via push notifications .
Contest list – Contest page with list of problems .
Tags – Get all the tags and all problems under any given tag .
Todos – Add/remove/update todos .
User profile pages – Easy access to profile of any user .
Compare – Compare profiles of any 2 CodeChef users .
Ratings – Access ratings of any user, in any contest type .
Problems – View the problem statements anywhere anytime (rendered perfectly) .
Submissions – View submissions by friends right in your mobile .
5) Chef’s Tools (fmot_a_rthur)
The app makes possible to run virtual participations in CodeChef and test in CodeChef cloud through terminal
6) Chef On Phone (binaryhackers)
Team Members
Pushkar Anand (pushkaranand)
Adith A Danthi (adith_danthi)
The app allows using CodeChef on your phone. Using this app you can see ongoing contests, future contests, contest problems, practice problems, read problem statements and solve the problems in the IDE built-in inside the app. You can also set reminders for upcoming contests. Download the code from the IDE to make submissions on CodeChef. This will help users to use CodeChef while on the move.
7) CodeChef CLI (epic_shit)
Team Members
Mrigank Krishan (mrigank11)
Vishnunarayan K. I. (z3r0_)
A CLI frontend for CodeChef. Everyone who is a programmer will be closer to a terminal than a web browser. The vim people won’t even like a web browser open when they are solving problems. This application aims to fix that. And fix it will it do.
8 ) Chef-CLI (dilbardilbar)
Team Members
Abhey Rana (uselesscoder1)
Mohit Khare (mkfeuhrer)
Chef-CLI is a command line interface which uses CodeChef’s official API. This application is for those who hate graphical applications and love to do everything through the terminal. With features like sample submit and problem recommendation, It is designed to improve the overall productivity of the user.
8 ) Question Tagger (lhash)
Team Members
Soumya (himanish)
Question Tagger is a multipurpose web app that one can use to tag and analyse their questions.
The key features of the web app are as follows:
-Tag questions – you can tag questions for your reference, so that you can practice questions of a particular tag later for improvement.
-Analyse tags – View all questions along with their submission status of the selected tag to gain insights of your ACs(accepted), WAs(wrong answer), TLEs(time limit exceeded), CTEs(compile time errors) and RTEs(run time error).
-Test generator – You can mark questions for improvement and can later create a practice test out of the questions available for improvement.
-View submission status of questions submitted during the mock test
We’re working on how we can make these apps available to the entire community and integrating them with our platform wherever possible. We’d like to thank you all for making our first Hackathon such a success. We’re looking forward to many such events in the future 
Good luck and happy coding!
Team CodeChef
Our leaderboards include coders from all kinds of backgrounds… even accounting! CodeChef talked to Taranpreet Singh, a coder and former CA student who traded his lucrative career as a Chartered Accountant for the thrilling world of programming, about his experiments with competitive programming and his journey so far.
As early as 10th grade, Taranpreet became interested in HTML programming. “At that time, designing HTML forms was a novelty,” he said, “My curiosity about where form data ends up, led to me not only learning PHP, but even developing a full-fledged online service website.” Unfortunately, the project was later dropped and Taranpreet fell victim to a common problem for Indian programmers, a lack of guidance and a good internet connection.
“I sometimes thought this was the end of my coding,” he continued “But destiny had other plans. In 12th I came across a programming competition called Eureka at CMS Lucknow, the turning point because it required C++ or Java. At this point, I explored Java, and won the competition.” Taranpreet attributes his win to the support of the IP dept. head of his school, who provided invaluable help and guidance when this young programmer needed it most.
This first win was only the beginning for Taranpreet. The Standard 12 (Higher Secondary Certificate) exams loomed large as did the CPT (Common Proficiency Test that all aspiring Chartered Accountants in India appeared for). “Google Codejam came in the way of my resolution and I found myself participating in a round (1A) two days before my Boards exam. Months passed and the day I attempted CPT, I joined CodeChef,” he explained. He has never looked back since.
Soon enough Taranpreet found himself at a familiar crossroads. “I had been pursuing CA, but I was spending a fair share of time towards developing programming skills, with no clear idea of how to utilize them,” he confessed, “It was not that I disliked CA, I was reasonably fine there, but I liked programming more. It was easier to stay up at night programming than solving taxation problems.” At this point, Taranpreet realized that he wanted to pursue programming. “My performance in Chartered Accountancy was not the best, but I was doing quite good on CodeChef, better than I had expected. So, I decided to switch, because I realized I’m much better here, than Accountancy. So, I myself made the choice.”
Fortunately, Taranpreet’s family did not oppose his decision, allowing him to make a smoother transition. “It came as a surprise to them, even though they already knew I was better off in programming. They took the change really well, for which I am still grateful,” he admitted. He is also deeply grateful to his mentor who provided guidance, “I had been studying CA, mostly self, so the only teacher aware about me switching is my school, IP department head, Mrs. Ambica Soni, the one who always guided me and supported me to grow into who I am today. She was, as she is always, supportive of my decision. I am quite lucky to get her as my mentor.”
Has becoming a dedicated programming student changed Taranpreet’s attitude towards Competitive programming? “In essence, no,” he asserted, “I still do programming with almost same attitude and approach toward computer programming.” But there are positive changes in his life that impact his work. “Now, I can give much more undivided focused time to programming. Earlier I had to divide time, and there was stress too. Now I feel quite relaxed and can focus on programming as much as I want. College environment means I have friends doing programming and not doing accounting, which is another thing that changed for good. So, all in all, I have no regrets switching. Life has changed for the better. I am developing my skills, and doing other things too, which I had to leave because of CA.”
As a six-star coder at CodeChef, Taranpreet has plenty of insights for anyone interested in competitive coding, “Don’t be afraid of Wrong Answers or Time Limit Exceeded or Runtime Errors” he advised, “There’s a well-said rule that we either win, or we learn. We lose only when we do not learn. If you get WA or TLE, it is not something to be depressed about, but an opportunity to learn. The person who never got WAs has never tried anything new.”
To those contemplating a career shift like his own Taranpreet advised, “Be sure about where you want to go and visualize your future. It is quite easy to decide to leave a field because you are frustrated, but quite hard to find a field which you love, where you can have a future. People may say, ‘grades don’t matter’, but don’t always believe them. Grades are not the most important factor, but they can help provide better opportunities. No matter what field you choose, if you have a passion for the discipline as well as the willingness to learn and cultivate the skills needed to excel, then you can be successful. But hard work is very important, especially in programming, as you will be competing against people who have had an earlier start and are much more experienced than you are.”
We’ll leave you with Taranpreet’s parting words which are wise beyond his 19 years:
“You can pursue your passion, with or without your job or education. It’s never too early nor too late to make choices. I don’t know what situation you are in, but I would like you to ask yourself a question. Are you happy?”.
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At CodeChef, we constantly stay in touch with CCDSAP holders to make the experience better for you and to fine-tune the certification. We spoke to Avjot Singh, a CCDSAP Foundation Level Certificate holder who is placed at Cleartax as an Intern Software Developer. We asked him about his CCDSAP experience and his tips for aspiring candidates.
Pure interest! Avjot was actually studying at the Delhi Technological University to be an Electronics Engineer, but his career took a sharp left turn in his second year when when his interests expanded to include Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. As he learned more about these subjects, Avjot realised that he could be a better student of these disciplines by investing some time and energy into learning the basics of computer science.
In an effort to learn more about how he could strengthen his DSA skills, Avjot began some dedicated research on the subject. Soon enough his journey of internet research led him to CCDSAP and he knew it was the right path for him. Avjot didn’t know anybody who had taken the test, but he was confident in the CodeChef name and was happy with the detailed instructions and information he found about the certification.
Diligence and practice are the only secrets according to this young developer! He thoroughly studied the practice materials and explored the mock tests in order to prepare for the test. As a student with no previous background in computer science, he started readying himself for the test around two months before the exam and he recommends that candidates work on at least 5 problems a day. Avjot found himself sufficiently armed for the foundation level certificate exam after studying the materials provided, but his advice to anyone considering the advanced level is to venture out and find more problems and mock tests to work on. “Be confident in yourself, and be clear with the fundamentals before jumping straight into complex problems,” he said.
Avjot certainly thinks so! He had been impressed with the study materials before, from a learning perspective, but once he began his internship, the software development intern found that much of what he had studied and been tested on, could now be practically implemented into his day-to-day assignments and responsibilities. Avjot is now considering appearing for the advanced certificate exam to take his knowledge and abilities to the next level.
The next CCDSAP exam takes place on the 20th of January. Check this link for details and get in touch if you have any questions for us!
It’s a month of big competitions for CodeChef’s student chefs in school! Cook up a storm and win prizes that range from cash gifts to the chance to represent India at a prestigious global coding event. Whether you’re a newbie in the world of competitive programming or a seasoned programmer, these competitions may be your shot at coding fame and glory!
What is it?
A nationwide competition organized annually by the Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS). This competition aims to identify school students with outstanding skills in algorithms and computer programming and give them an opportunity to compete on the world stage of the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).
What do you have to do?
Start by entering either the Zonal Informatics Olympiad (ZIO) or the Zonal Computing Olympiad (ZCO). The former is a written test that assesses the student’s analytical and computational reasoning while the latter is a programming contest where the student must use a programming language like C, C++, Java or Python.
When is the contest?
ZIO will be held on 18th November, 2018 while ZCO can be attempted on 2nd December, 2018 both at 36 centres across the country.
Till when can you register?
The last date for registration for both ZCO and ZIO is October 31, 2018.
What can you win?
Students who pass the zonal rounds can appear for the INOI, a national level coding competition. INOI winners will get hands-on training at the IOI Training Camp and a select 4 will represent India at the IOI.
Learn more here: www.iarcs.org.in/inoi/
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What is it?
A unique opportunity for school students to compete against college level coders at the ICPC Regionals round.This competition is all about giving tomorrow’s pro coders an early start.
What do you have to do?
Form a team of at most 3 people and register here www.codechef.com/teams/register/ICPCSC18. You must be a school student to participate in ICPC for Schools.
When is the contest?
The online rounds begin on 23rd October 2018. The on-site finals will be held at two locations: at ABV-IIITM Gwalior on the 16th and 17th of December 2018 and at Amritapuri Coimbatore on the 28th and 29th of December 2018.
Till when can you register?
Registrations end on 21 October, 2018
What can you win?
Every team that solves a minimum of one online problem will receive a participation certificate. Top performers at the on-site rounds can take home cash prizes of up to Rs. 20,000.
Learn more here: www.codechef.com/icpc/2019/schools
What is it?
CodeChef’s own flagship programming competition that attracts the best coders from all over the world. Expect 5 online rounds of intense coding culminating in an on-site finale in Mumbai.
What do you have to do?
Register your team (of one or two) using your CodeChef account here www.codechef.com/teams/register/SNCKQL19 and simply solve the problems to code your way to the top!
When is the contest?
The first round scheduled from October 12 – 16. Detailed schedule can be found here: www.codechef.com/snackdown/2019/schedule
Till when can you register?
Registrations end on October 16.
What can you win?
The global winner of the contest can take home $10,000 with special prizes reserved for school students. Not to mention bragging rights and some well-deserved fame and glory!
Learn more about SnackDown 2019 here: www.codechef.com/snackdown/
Student coders, this is your chance to shine!
At CodeChef, we constantly stay in touch with CCDSAP holders to make the experience better for you and to fine-tune the certification. We spoke to Amit Upadhyay, a CCDSAP Foundation Level Certificate holder who is placed at Cleartax as a Software Engineer. We asked him about his CCDSAP experience and his tips for aspiring candidates. so read on!
A little background on Amit and his introduction to coding.
Amit completed his engineering from the Army Institute of Technology in Pune in 2018. Amit has always been involved with the world of code. He started coding on the CodeChef platform in his first year, and eventually moved on to making mobile apps in his second year. During this he found that he had a wealth of knowledge (and libraries!) to share with the world, so he began blogging as well. Amit credits the environment in his college for boosting his interest in coding competitively. In his first year, his seniors informed him about the CodeChef platform and he quite enjoyed the thrill of competitive programming.
How did Amit hear about CCDSAP and why did he decide to appear for it?
Amit heard about CCDSAP when Directi landed up in his campus for a recruitment drive. Clearing the CCDSAP also allows one to interview with Directi and Amit decided to make use of this opportunity. Even though his concepts were clear, Amit decided to consolidate his learning before appearing by taking the mock test on the CodeChef website. He recommends taking them to get an idea about the exam format and the correct pacing needed to finish the exam in time.
How should one prepare for CCDSAP?
Amit believes that a strong understanding of the fundamentals of DSA is what is tested at CCDSAP. So how does one get there? He recommends using a good book of DSA theory matched with an equal amount of solving DSA problems, like the ones available on the CodeChef website. He advises that candidates should study one data structure at a time and then solve 10-20 problems based on it before moving to the next. There are also many videos available online to help with the conceptual part. Finally, he recommends the prepare section on the CCDSAP site as an invaluable resource, complete with mock tests.
So where does DSA help one in the industry?
While most products depend on existing frameworks which can be understood by reading the manual, Amit emphasizes that DSA helps you learn how to think. It lets you understand the most optimal way of going about solving a problem, no matter what platform or framework is used. After all, problem-solving skills are universal and carry over to your next assignment as well.
Amit also spoke about how college doesn’t quite prepare you for industry challenges, and a lot of the learning happens on the job. At CodeChef we agree that this is certainly an issue and efforts can be made to bridge the gap between recruiters and candidates. CCDSAP does address this in a small way, and eventually we can bring a systemic change together.
The next CCDSAP exam takes place on the 7th of October. Check this link for details and get in touch if you have any questions for us!
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