Your journey to Programming

Hi there!! This is my first blog(per se) on Medium. Ever since, I always wanted to write something of my own experience when reading other’s experiences.

So this blog is basically about how u start programming once u get into a college. First things first, coding has practically nothing to do with your core studies(even if u are a computer science major). It is an art of logic, maths and creativity. U devise algorithms for the problems u r gonna solve. So, basically enjoy ur first semester . But, start learning about programming basics by taking up a language u wish to master. I would recommend using C++ or Python for the same.

PS: Don’t go for learning a number of languages. Learn a language and implement the algorithm or data structure u learn in that language.

Competitive programming gives u field where u can apply these concepts to test your skills by solving problems in a time-bound contest. Recommended sites would be Codeforces and then Codechef. There are a plethora of other competitive programming sites like leetcode,kattis,topcoder(famous for TCO),hackerearth etc.

So, race ur mind against the contest problems and most importantly upsolve. Upsolving means solving problems later after a contest ends. This is the best way to learn more and at the same time perform better in later contests.

Best of luck.. I would be sharing some good problems for u to think and also discuss the optimal way to solve the problem. U can find the codes at github.com/abhis324/cp. Favourite(and important) areas would be Graph Theory, Dynamic Programming, Greedy Algorithms, Strings and implementation problems.

Thanks for reading. Please subscribe!!