My Competitive Programming Journey (and how to practice)

Рет қаралды 142,826

3 жыл бұрын

Here's the stuff I mentioned in the video:
USACO: www.usaco.org/current/index.php
USACO Training: train.usaco.org/usacogate
Codeforces: codeforces.com
CodeChef: www.codechef.com
AtCoder: atcoder.jp
And a cool site that lets you see difficulties and stuff for AtCoder problems: kenkoooo.com/atcoder#/table/
This is a special video for reaching International Grandmaster on Codeforces. I'll probably do more of these for some sort of milestone special, so the best way to see more is to subscribe :)
By the way, we're hosting the Montgomery Blair Informatics Tournament on November 14! It will be much like the contests you're already used to, with problems authored by my school's programming team. Registration is open now, and you can see the competition's rules, format, past problems, and info for registration at mbit.mbhs.edu/

Пікірлер: 248

@danielkoynov5627 3 жыл бұрын

Damn when he said fix your sleep schedule I realized I was watching this at 1 am. I'll definitely try to work on that.

@RiteshNEVERUNIFORM 3 жыл бұрын

Dammit Its 3am here

@skyveil 2 жыл бұрын

same here

@drainbamage2542 2 жыл бұрын

wait... you guys are having sleep?

@danielkoynov5627 2 жыл бұрын

@@drainbamage2542 Sometimes

@champion_aarush Ай бұрын

me at 1:30 am....🥲🥲🥲

@santhoshvardhan6603 3 жыл бұрын

You should definitely consider doing more videos like this. Thank you for this and congrats on getting to IGM.

@denjellboone8812 3 жыл бұрын

Nice video Colin. I think it is good to see that the way was not as easy as it seemed when looking at your ratings. I personally liked the part on how you coped with failure the most. Respect on putting in this much effort in your early years. I spend my highschool time on a lot of really useless stuff :-)

@vishalchaurasia3386 3 жыл бұрын

Your Journey to Competitive Programming is quiet motivating 😚😚. You work hard to get what you want.

@ayushvarshney6321 3 жыл бұрын

Really impressive journey and I'm sure this will inspire many more to follow in your steps. Congrats on IGM and 7 star (in such a short time too) and I wish you all the best for the future!

@achintyaeeshan3069 3 жыл бұрын

Amazing video Colin, waiting for this since so long

@sohammukherjee8079 3 жыл бұрын

Congrats on IGM and 7*,en exceptional achievement at that age of yours as any sane person would reckon! A big thank you for the explanatory videos, wishing you good luck for the future, and looking forward to learning much more from you!

@dhruv78888 3 жыл бұрын

What is his age in approx..

@harshupadhyay4393 2 жыл бұрын

@@dhruv78888 he's first year college students, so not more than 20 ig

@orewaluffy1374 2 жыл бұрын

Lol he is 18 😂

@dineshbs6635 3 жыл бұрын

Wow, thats great Colin. Congrats on the IGM!

@anmol_tomer 3 жыл бұрын

Really great advice, I think sleeping schedule thing was my favourite, because I noticed that as well, due to lockdown we have online classes so I get more time to sleep and these days I really feel great while giving a contest when I've had proper sleep. Please continue to make videos like these. Really great content. 🙌🏻🙌🏻

@kevinmiao226 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks, Colin. your video really helps me fix my concerns about competitive programming. Keep up the good work!

@OscarRendon 3 жыл бұрын

Loved this kind of content, really honest and encouraging! 💪 Not too much is being said about ranking stress, failures, and discouraging contest results. Usually, red coders seem like ppl from another world with just higher IQ, and it might be true for some, but can also be a mindset trap to avoid keep trying after failure!

@aaronmei1630 3 жыл бұрын

Congrats on lGM! Very well deserved.

@gabrielwu5787 3 жыл бұрын

is that a lowercase L?

@peihu3201 3 жыл бұрын

thats an upper case i lmao

@asdfasdf-fk3ow 3 жыл бұрын

@@peihu3201 its a joke lol

@adityakrishna11 3 жыл бұрын

IGM - iGM LGM - lGM

@adityakrishna11 3 жыл бұрын

so yea that's a lowercase L.

@suvidsinghal1365 3 жыл бұрын

Was eagerly waiting for it :)

@chandanagrawal3283 3 жыл бұрын

Congrats 🎊 , u always help me even in some very dumb questions really thankful and inspirational.❤️🙏

@ankitpandey4602 3 жыл бұрын

Well you cleared doubts of thousands of students in a mere 28 minutes of time. Thanks a lot, Colin.

@AnuragYadav-cp9jh 2 жыл бұрын

😂😂

@manjunathvasam4981 3 жыл бұрын

Was waiting for something like this

@kesarkiran5265 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks a lot for the initiative!!

@miraszarpullayev9150 3 жыл бұрын

That's really inspiring, just started my own journey thanks to you :)

@imranif3899 3 жыл бұрын

That was really encouraging. Applause for reaching IGM too.

@hardikawasthi6210 3 жыл бұрын

An informative video. Will love to watch more of such videos...

@stretch8390 17 күн бұрын

Only getting the test case is a real vibe, love it.

@peihu3201 3 жыл бұрын

thank you @Colin Galen this helped very much, I will continue on with usaco and be a better CPer!!! :)

@mohdshoaibcs0717 3 жыл бұрын

thank u for the video brother, it really really inspires me alot

@SouravendraKrishnaDeb 3 жыл бұрын

Congrats dude!

@kongzilla2897 3 жыл бұрын

Motivational !! yayy you have gained a new subscriber : )

@qlf9_ 3 жыл бұрын

colin orz legit though this is a really good video that I think will help cpers of all levels improve :) (congrats on IGM!)

@antontrygubO_o 3 жыл бұрын

Omkar orz

@danielqiu3320 3 жыл бұрын

Omkar orz

@sadhunarun7430 3 жыл бұрын

waited for this video so long bro..

@336_saranyamaity8 2 жыл бұрын

0:56 you have right to make this video because you are one of the legends who has proved himself to be worthy of giving knowledge

@manjunathvasam4981 3 жыл бұрын

Please do more of this type of videos

@DreaMagnifier 3 жыл бұрын

I think sometimes motivation is great better than on contest because it boost up and gives the answer why he not me, which we can't learn from giving contest

@nishithbaravkar7549 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks a lot colin for the guidance

@abhaypatil2000 3 жыл бұрын

18 hours and already the most watched video on your channel

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

Yep, this is the first time I've actually tried to play the youtube algorithm

@nandansharma6844 3 жыл бұрын

Really helped me a lot brother

@shrayammitra6447 3 жыл бұрын

Wish you get MLE soon 😄, thanks vm for the video

@NamanCodes Жыл бұрын

This guy is a legend

@rajatnagpure7445 3 жыл бұрын

We want more coming!

@shubhampokhriyal8491 3 жыл бұрын

Awesome galen

@GuzunVeaceslav 3 жыл бұрын

Great video

@kishorenalluri7703 3 жыл бұрын

Do more of these

@danielwu624 3 жыл бұрын

Dang, I'm going to need to do a lot more ;gitgud.

@harshanadendla5873 3 жыл бұрын

hey man, please take out some time and do some practice-tips oriented videos.

@kroozcastro9636 3 жыл бұрын

Awesome!!!!

@PrashantChauhan-nn4zn 3 ай бұрын

very motivating journey 😊😊....

@notvoidz 3 жыл бұрын

great vid =D

@pacha2880 3 жыл бұрын

"fix tour sleeping schedule", I really need to do that

@sobieso 3 жыл бұрын

orz ur my biggest inspiration ily kekw

@nirajandata 2 жыл бұрын

philosophie

@abhinav4279_ 3 жыл бұрын

It would be nice if you share your thought process of upsolving and ways you consider important to improve this process.

@mathdude1613 3 жыл бұрын

Nice vid!

@adhoc3018 3 жыл бұрын

Very impressive.

@AnmolGera2 3 жыл бұрын

Can you put together all the questions? If possible and the type of questions you did?

@udayverma6120 3 жыл бұрын

Hey Colin, how much time did you practice on an average during those two years? Also, where did you cover data structures from?

@prakash_77 3 жыл бұрын

Great video! Any update on USACO/IOI plans for this year?

@shashankgupta29 3 жыл бұрын

I was just about to start and i found this ❤️

@nishansingh77 3 жыл бұрын

Look who I found!!

@shashankgupta29 3 жыл бұрын

@@nishansingh77 Waiting for A tutorial on "How to Become CM on CF in 6 months " from you.😂

@throinemaster3246 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks a lot.

@MohitYadav-yv2rw 3 жыл бұрын

All the best for LGM!

@vibhusharma5374 3 жыл бұрын

what are the learning sources you used during your whole journey

@stars-hx1oe 3 жыл бұрын

So you heard about it from your friends and you beat your friends :)

@arpansen964 3 жыл бұрын

can you please provide a list of most asked concepts like segment tree, lazy propagation etc.

@TheMsnitish 3 жыл бұрын

Indian views skyrocketing. Thanks for making this video man.

@GoldenLion5648 3 жыл бұрын

What exactly were the problems that you cheesed and how did you cheese them at 8:15? Awesome video, very inspirational!

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

Silver p2 and gold p2 from this year: www.usaco.org/current/index.php?page=open19results Silver was squeezing an unintended O(n^2) solution past the weak test cases Gold was using an unintended math solution (that was actually very easy for them to counteract, had they known it) for what was supposed to be finding a minimum spanning tree

@hashtagYSK 3 жыл бұрын

Hey colin can you make a video about how to master dynamic programming

@rajgondalia1471 3 жыл бұрын

Great video! Can you give advice on what to practice, I am stuck on 1700-1800 on codeforces for nearly about 3 months. I am practicing problems of around 1900-2000 in codeforces what else should I do?

@jittojoyes7533 3 жыл бұрын

Would you recommend usaco for a beginner. Like i was doing codeforces and i still remain as a newbie and i did work hard, but was not consistent enough. Now I feel like i messed up everything can u suggest me what to do next?

@sumedhvangara7368 3 жыл бұрын

also do you have any advice on knowing when to move on to a higher level of problems? Like ik that I shud solve problems until ik how to do that level but how many problems should I do until ik I am done with that level?

@VY-zt3ph 2 жыл бұрын

DO you have the question list which you did on CodeForces over the time like from noob to masters??

@mridulkumar786 3 жыл бұрын

We all want to see you LGM soon :-)

@akashpratapsingh3553 3 жыл бұрын

That's so great man but can you please make at a list of all algorithms and data structure which are useful in competitive programming and all other topics which can help other noob programmers.

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

That's what USACO training is for. And to be honest, for beginners, it's so much more about practicing general problem solving than learning specific concepts. So such a list isn't really necessary.

@akashpratapsingh3553 3 жыл бұрын

@@ColinGalen thanks alot mate. I really appreciate it.😊

@riteshrastogi5388 3 жыл бұрын

You also spoke about practicing on Atcoder, as it has those AdHoc Problems, which generally helps in improving the thinking ability. But, how did you practice over there? What I mean to ask is, that I think we cannot sort the AtCoder Problems in some difficulty order, or solved count. So, could you please throw some light upon that as well.

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

Ah. Thank you, that's something I should have mentioned (and will now be in the video's description). There's this cool site called kenkoooo which basically lets you do exactly what you mentioned. Here it is: kenkoooo.com/atcoder#/table/

@ipb5508 3 жыл бұрын

man ur are awesome

@user-ww4fc1he6o 2 жыл бұрын

Hey, thanks. You inspired me to dive into competitive programming. The thing is I have 2 chances of participating at IOI, I'm currently 1201 rating on Codechef after 8 days of practice (250> ploblems solved). Started 02.06.22

@nahrafe Жыл бұрын

Seems like youre on a good path! Good luck with your journey mate!

@user-ww4fc1he6o Жыл бұрын

@@nahrafe Hey, thanks! I've made a lot of progress over the past 4 months. I hit 1760 (Codechef) rating yesterday. And I have become confident solving hard problems with rating above 2000 during contests. I am so close to 4* and I am planning on getting 5* by the end of 2022

@humphreyxu5007 3 жыл бұрын

Colin, I was wondering if you came from any type of math olympiads or math contests before USACO? thanks

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

Nope, I actually hated competitive math when young

@krishshah3974 3 жыл бұрын

@@ColinGalen lol

@josephpark2093 3 жыл бұрын

Does USACO training still work? I registered for it and it just won't let me in.

@kshitijsabale1857 3 жыл бұрын

is usaco training good for begineer i am in pupil (green) in codeforces ... if not then can you suggest resources for begineer ....plz reply

@wox5922 3 жыл бұрын

YAAAAAAAY

@rupeshsingh3077 3 жыл бұрын

What what extensions are you using?

@voice6905 3 жыл бұрын

So what is the path one should follow to start with CP?

@danitorres124 3 жыл бұрын

That was a pretty good path for that period of time, congrats mate! The things that I hope to workout from here are *Fixing my sleep time *Doing contests and upsolving or at least try to understeand what the thought for that problem was *Find the sweet spot to practice, not too easy, not too hard Let's see what happens :D

@MohitYadav-yv2rw 3 жыл бұрын

Super genious

@agnimandur7911 3 жыл бұрын

Hey Colin I "liked" this video once with my main account and once with this account :) Next step LGM I guess.

@SurajSingh-pb4bs 3 жыл бұрын

Very informative, I'd just like to ask how would you say your math was when you first started with competitive programming?

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

The only math experience I had was school math, so probably weak

@cydrus2856 3 жыл бұрын

I guess the next step is 100k subs on youtube!

@Arcvx 3 жыл бұрын

Would it be fine to use the USACO site/USACO training portal strictly for practicing and not be hassled into their competitions and all the other stuff? I’m mainly looking into competitive programming as an outlet to brush up my coding skills while having something to occupy myself in college.

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, their competitions are totally not required. In fact, their problems are usually available around a week after each contest, so you'll still have access to them even if you don't do the contest live.

@MiketheCoder 3 жыл бұрын

Thoughts how to improve sleep schedule?

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

You could try fixing some sleep time/schedule and forcing yourself to adhere to it no matter what, possibly including other people to help give pressure

@chandantyagi1054 3 жыл бұрын

I strongly feel You should update your mic. Thankyou

@the_humble_lazy 3 жыл бұрын

yeah do this kiindaa videos too

@dunghuynhtien7153 3 жыл бұрын

Could you share with us your schedule ? (In the morning, you started practicing when ..., how many problems ..., how long to think on 1 problem ..., in the afternoon, evening, ..., sleep how many hours ...) Thanks!

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

It wasn't really a rigorous schedule. I just did normal stuff, went to school, (tried to) swiftly finish homework, and when I had free time, I would spend it thinking on whatever problem I was currently stuck on. Sleep was relatively normal, went to bed around 11-12 PM. Typically I would try to think on a single problem until I felt completely tired of it - not just stuck, but so lost that I felt that any more time spent would just be a waste, and this often only happened after multiple days.

@dunghuynhtien7153 3 жыл бұрын

@@ColinGalen Competitive programming is really for you I think ! Wish you luck and get LGM along the journey .

@yogenderyadav4550 10 ай бұрын

Buddy love the way you FLEX xd

@meenasinghal733 3 жыл бұрын

Galen Colin ioi 2021 gold

@Socrates225 3 жыл бұрын

what would you advice for someone stuck at specalist

@ujalamaurya292 3 жыл бұрын

How did you learn dsa so perfectly....can you suggest plzzzzzzzzzzz

@08ykr22 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the helpful video. How imperative is it to have a strong knowledge in discrete mathematics to excel in CP?

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

I don't think it's necessary as a prerequisite, however, coming in with knowledge about its concepts (like combinatorics & graphs, from what I know about it) certainly can't hurt. In general, I think you can learn basically anything required for CP in the context of CP, meaning that even without prerequisite knowledge, you can still be able to learn and apply it.

@jeffzhang4852 3 жыл бұрын

As a UMD student, all you MoCo kids are CS gods. Us HoCo kids cannot compete :(

@anunaysharma2718 3 жыл бұрын

When do you think a person should start participating in contests oncodeforces?

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

I think, as soon as you can start. Contests help you know the exact type of things you have to solve/know, and the more you do, the better your mentality about them will be.

@Arcvx 3 жыл бұрын

Wtf, how are you verified with only 72 subscribers?

@himanshugupta7647 3 жыл бұрын

Is 5 months enough to get 1600 my current rating is just 800

@professormoriarty7439 Жыл бұрын

How many hours a day did you practice. I really like to know

@18trinhvietcuong26 10 ай бұрын

how old are you when you started this? thanks

@satishprajapati1684 2 жыл бұрын

reaching red in 2 yrs from scratch is just insaneeeee

@orewaluffy1374 2 жыл бұрын

I did that in 4 months 😂

@nextlevel7270 2 жыл бұрын

@@orewaluffy1374 can you share your journey from beginning ?

@user-en5vj6vr2u 6 ай бұрын

Not even two years. Un fucking fair 😭

@hussienmoustafa3668 3 жыл бұрын

what is your advice for a beginner .. Do i have to start usaco training or continue with codeforces / atcoder ... I want to improve my rating in codeforces and skills in competetive programming... I have been solving codeforces and atcoder problems for more than a year but there is no progress in my rating and i am still stuck at newbie

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

I suppose, if what you've been doing hasn't been working, then it can't hurt to try something new, right? I think USACO training is amazing because it forces you to adopt the learning mentality.

@jimothyus 3 жыл бұрын

Well competitive programing needs 2 things 1.Ability to problem solve 2. Knowledge of algorithms and patterns since you have been doing codeforces you probably already have some grasp on the 2nd part which means you probably need to improve your ability to think and solve problems. How do you do that? I dont know really what the best way is but im sure google knows!

@cydrus2856 3 жыл бұрын

@@jimothyus I just started to read a book called "Think like a programmer" maybe it can help him since I also have a hard time solving problems.

@soumyasaurav8388 3 жыл бұрын

69th! :) congrats doe!

@MiketheCoder 3 жыл бұрын

Do you think USACO is good to get to expert?

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

Yes, I ended up getting to expert level solely through USACO

@MiketheCoder 3 жыл бұрын

@@ColinGalen should we stop doing codeforces to get to expert?

@ColinGalen 3 жыл бұрын

@@MiketheCoder I think practicing on Codeforces (e.g. doing contests, reviewing old problems, practicing things at that level) would be the best strategy, because you're working on the exact skills that you need. I'm just saying that other things, like USACO, would also work.