3 ms·
Programming competitions aren't a great reflection of either real-world programming or real-world CS research, that's true. But that doesn't mean they're a bad
by lacker 17y ago
Programming competitions aren't a great reflection of either real-world programming or real-world CS research, that's true. But that doesn't mean they're a bad thing.
Here's some pro-competition points.
1. Any way of making programming more fun will get more people into programming.
2. Competitions encourage you to learn the mathematical, algorithmic side of programming, which is another useful angle to attack problems from.
3. Competitions help people learn teamwork under pressure.
4. Competitions provide an incentive for people who are already acing their classes to learn more and improve themselves.
5. Practicing for competitions forces you to become broadly acquainted with standard algorithms.
- dkersten 17y agoI took part in several competitions and while I didn't do as well as I would have liked, I did think they were useful in that they were definitely fun, I got to meet some interesting and likeminded people, some of whom I'm still in contact with, many years later, it was challenging and provided motivation to learn more programming techniques, improve my skills and it helped me learn new ways of solving problems. Sure, the problems weren't something you'd often encounter in the real world, but the experience and education was worth it.
- Locke1689 17y ago3. Competitions help people learn teamwork under pressure. Well said. I can honestly say that I've been in very few situations more stressful than the ICPC programming competitions. I guess I'm decent but not great at competitive coding, so I always expect more of myself than I end up doing :-/ Great experience though, wouldn't miss it for the world.