SarveshDubey's blog

By SarveshDubey, history, 5 years ago, In English

Hi, Actually I wanted to participate in Topcoder challenges as I do in Codeforces but I am confused that which challenges are for competitive programming as many challenges go on parrallely on Topcoder. Can someone one guide me what challenges regularly are for competitive programming as on Codeforces there are Div 2,Div1 and Educational rounds etc. Thanks in advance.

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There are two type of competitive programming events on Topcoder.

  1. Single Round Match(SRM) — There are 3-4 SRMs every month. It's duration is 95 minutes(75 minutes coding + 5 minutes break + 15 minutes challenge phase). Like codeforces has hack, similarly Topcoder has challenge. The only difference is you can challenge only after coding phase is over.

  2. Marathon matches — Don't know much about these because I haven't participated yet ¯_(ツ)_/¯ This consist of one approximate problem and duration is 1 week.

Apart from this, there is an annual event called Topcoder Open(TCO) just like Facebook Hackercup and Google Code Jam. TCO 19 algorithm rounds starts this month. You can find schedule here.

How to participate? You can either use their web arena which I won't recommend using it because it doesn't contain all features and is slower. Other way is to compete using java applet. You need to install java and stuff to run it which can be very annoying for beginners. For installation help, maybe this link can help for Windows and this link for Ubuntu.