IS COMPETITIVE CODING MUST?

Read time< 2 min Is it compulsory to do competitive coding? Is there no alternative to it? I am not good at it, what should I do?

First of all, we must know, what is competitive coding?
Competitive coding in simple terms, incorporates problem solving ability in someone. Competitive coding is must for :

• Your life, as it builds problem solving ability in you.
• Development internships in dream companies like Google, Microsoft, etc.
• Development jobs in dream companies like Amazon, Facebook, etc.
• For competitive competitions, which may have cash prizes :).

Now coming back to the questions, in my opinion you need to be a top competitive coder for getting a good internship or job. Remember I emphasized on the word 'top'.

Now different people can have different levels of problem solving ability, so it's perfectly fine that someone is better at competitive coding than you. Basically, competitive coding relates to PCM ( Physics,  Chemistry & Math ) in your schooling, if you are good at it, you will surely get a good engineering college, but if you aren't good at it, life doesn't ends there right!, you can study to excel in board exams only, isn't? But, even to excel in board exams, you must have moderate knowledge of PCM, so is with competitive coding, you can't skip it,  but you need not to be a top coder at the same time.
Now, the question is, if I am not very good at competitive coding then what should I do?
In my opinion you should follow the following steps - 

1. Firstly, you should try to improve your competitive coding as I told you can't skip it. 
2. After that, once you become an average coder, you are comfortable with medium level problems on websites like GeekforGeeks, then you can start your development journey. You can explore machine learning, data science, web development, android development, block chain, etc. and you can develop your skills respectively. 
3. Continue to practice competitive coding in parallel with your development skills.

Now let's see these steps in details-

1. Start with GeeksforGeeks or HackerRank, solve about 200-250 questions. First try solving easy one's, then medium and then hard if possible. After this, if you want, you can move to CodeChef or CodeForces to solve more difficult problems.
   
2. Now, once you are comfortable with competitive coding, explore about machine learning, web development, android development, etc. on internet( use YouTube, blogs, websites, etc.). Try to understand, what is actually done in each of these in very simple terms. Now, after this, start learning whatever hits you the most, you can start with free tutorials on YouTube or some course on Udemy, Coursera, etc. This will give you actual idea about that domain.
   
3. Now, keep honing your development skills and try to do competitive coding in parallel( you can even do 1-2 question per day, just try to maintain consistency). 

Make projects with development skills that you will learn, participate on online coding events with competitive skills that you will learn, this all will add up in your resume and will help you in getting your dream job or internship. To get an internship in bigwigs like Google, Microsoft, etc. you don't need necessarily be a 6 star coder on CodeChef, but you must be better than at least 95% people in competitive coding and you must be comfortable with at least medium level problems. Also, competitive coding plays a very important role in hiring process of bigwigs, but remember there are also some other very important things, like your projects, hot topics like DBMS, Networking, etc.

In upcoming blogs, I will talk about projects, ML, Data Science, the level of difficulty of problems asked in interviews of bigwigs like Microsoft, that will help you to get an idea about what level of competitive coding you need to get such internships,etc. Subscribe for more interesting blogs.