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Advice to early competitive programmers
I participated in one online preliminary ACM ICPC regional contest from Dhaka, BD site. I have also competitive programming experience in UVa online judge, Topcoder (https://www.topcoder.com/members/survival07/details/?track=DATA_SCIENCE&subTrack=SRM), Codeforces, Codechef etc. From my those experiences, I am going to share some advice to be a better problem solver in competitive programming.
- Have mentors/friends
If you are in a degree program in a college/university, spend time with friends who does competitive programming or someone who participated in ACM ICPC before. They can provide you with guidelines to develop your problem solving skill.
- be consistent in problem solving
Make a routine of how long and when you want to give time to competitive programming problem solving.
- do upsolving
If you were not able to solve a problem in an onsite or online contest, give some extra time after contest to figure out the solution, learn the required algorithm, then code the solution.
- practice in a contest setting
Solve problems by assigning a time duration to them. Solve with teammates if you are preparing for regional or final ACM ICPC round.
- discuss problems with friends
