camc's blog

How do you describe competitive programming?
By camc, history, 20 months ago, In English

When someone who has never written a computer program asks you "what is competitive programming?" how do you respond?

I usually find myself saying some variation of: "You're solving a puzzle by giving instructions to a computer."

I feel my response is inadequate and doesn't provide a very good description of what competitive programming actually is.

I'm curious what you guys say when asked this question.

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20 months ago, # |
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IMO, but you have an excuse to sit in front of a computer all day.

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20 months ago, # |
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Like what math is to engineering, cp is to software engineering

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20 months ago, # |
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I usually use the analogy of solving Rubik's cube in the fastest possible time so as to beat others.

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20 months ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +19 Vote: I do not like it

This is not a lot of reds

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20 months ago, # |
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How is my program giving wrong answer on pretest 2 ?

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20 months ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +44 Vote: I do not like it

pain

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20 months ago, # |
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This is a dilemma I ran into when trying to advertise the CP club at my university. Currently my description is "programming contests where competitors write code to solve as many algorithmic problems as possible in a limited amount of time." And my go-to example that most laymen have heard of is Google Code Jam. Definitely looking for something more concrete though.

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20 months ago, # |
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Mind sport!

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20 months ago, # |
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That's when you wanna do some magic with computer, but it doesn't agree with you and says "stfu u stupid human, WA2 is your diagnosis"

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