What is the best way to prepare for ACM ICPC 2016-17?
By Asim Krishna Prasad
Posted on 09/12/14
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Here is the link to this question on quora..
And this answer :
This was the first time I attempted ICPC Amritapuri Online round (my 2nd year at NIT Allahabad) and I had this same question in my mind when I had started preparing for ICPC..
I don't think I am qualified enough to make any statement but I can atleast tell you how my team prepared for it.. (we are just a bunch of beginners)
1> We had started with a two member team as we were having problems in getting a third member.. That time we used to have problems in solving even the basic problems, so we started practicing as an obvious remedy. We used to practice on CodeChef and CodeForces.. CodeChef Long was really helpful in reaching out to new topics.. We ended up solving 3-questions in Long but this was clearly not enough
2> Next step, go through some basic algorithms, STL, a little practice of DP and getting comfortable with techniques like hashing and pre-computation.. We ended up solving 5-6 problems in CodeChef Long..
3> Next step, work on time.. Here came CodeForces.. We started taking part in CodeForces rounds (Tried TopCoder but it was a little demotivating at the first time).. CodeForces rounds are more competitive and require more focus, speed and accuracy.. It was then we realized that we had got accustomed of solving a problem very slowly due to Long challenges..
Now, we started something which I would call, Self-Impositions .. We kept time-limit for ourselves. Result : Ended up solving 6-7 questions in CodeChef Long in a maximum of 2 days..
4> We took part in GCJ and I ended up solving all the questions (but only after many WAs).. so we started working on making some tricky test cases ourselves whenever we participated in any contest.. This part is very important as one single WA proves very harmful (we are just beginners remember :P )..
5> By this time our basic algorithms got clear and we were slowly improving on our speed.. (and we got our third member).. The next step, working as a team.. This step is very important but our team lacked this, thanks to the delay in getting to the third team-mate.. ICPC is very different from individual events as you have to work as a team.. We devised strategies, got to know of each-other's strong points / weaknesses, and started taking part in team events..
6> We are not a group of awesome coders, we are beginners and this fact was reflected in our performance in our intra-college-programming-contest.. Our team lacked coordination and dedication when it came to performing in a group.. We were not able to divide the work among ourselves, so we started with a simple strategy, if one can't solve any of the remaining questions, he'll start making test cases for the questions that other's are attempting.. This strategy proved useful to us when we actually participated in the ICPC-Amritapuri online round this year .. We ended up solving 3 questions and got selected for the onsite round..
PS : I am not at all qualified to guide anyone for ICPC (or anything else as a matter of fact).. but I know how it feels when one starts preparing for ICPC, that feeling of getting impressed by people who are really awesome and at the same time getting demotivated by under-estimating one-self.. It just takes a little courage, a little craziness and a lot of dedication to get into the sport of Competitive Programming..
Here are the profiles of my team members :
Aditya Shankar Tripathi :
CodeChef User | megatron_64
megatron_64 - Codeforces
Manish Kumar Sinha :
CodeChef User | mmaks
mmaks - Codeforces
TopCoder Member Profile | mmaks
Asim Krishna Prasad
CodeChef User | pakhandi
pakhandi - Codeforces
TopCoder Member Profile | pakhandi
Gl & Hf :)
Team : cerberus
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