maximaxi's blog

Is there a "SKILL TREE" for competitive programming?
By maximaxi, history, 3 years ago, In English

I know there are great resources out there, and "awesome lists" and so on, and it doesn't help unless you actually put in the effort. However, I'm wondering if there are some resources you prefer, that have a "in-order" list of skills, similar to a skill tree.

This website on HackerEarth gives you an simple idea of how you can progress over time. Is there anything that is like https://www.hackerearth.com/getstarted-competitive-programming/ but a bit more thorough? Or even a cool visual that looks like an RPG skill tree? It would be motivational to have a visual like that in front of me.

Thank you skilled programmers of CodeForces.

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3 years ago, # |
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Auto comment: topic has been updated by maximaxi (previous revision, new revision, compare).

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3 years ago, # |
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Solve problems you like and google things you don't know yet after reading the editorial. There isn't a strict order in which you should learn stuff, and frankly, the skill tree would be simply too large. My main advice should be not to get too ahead of yourself and not to stay at some point for too long. Always try to practice problems a few hundred rating points above your current rating and you should be good to go.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    I agree, but say I'm trying to explain competitive programming to new grade 9 students for example, and want to show them a concrete roadmap in a presentation. Or am creating a programming website tutorial website and need to make a slide deck for someone who's funding my website on why my arrangement of the skills of the site make sense according to a roadmap of skills.

    I appreciate your response and 100% agree with that if my question was "what is the best way to get better"? But I'm looking for a different response this time around.

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
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      Olympiad programming is demotivating if you can't win. You need something that will show you that your work is not in vain. The rating often falls even if you work hard. Я перевёл переводчиком.

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3 years ago, # |
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If somebody makes this thing for competitve programming, it certainly won't be tree. It'll be a huge graph with cycles and self loops and multiple edges (idk what those signify but it sounds cool)

If you want to introduce gr9 students to CP, you should show them one or two easy problems like Watermelon (4A), at least that's how I was introduced to CP.

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3 years ago, # |
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There was a site hecs.info that's long dead now. I guess you can access it via wayback machine. The topics seem to be ordered by the distance from the start. It's in russian and idk really about the quality but it's at least something.

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