How to improve the competitive programming scenario in India

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13

Ok so lets first divide the people doing CP in India in broadly two categories :

  1. College Students
  2. School Students (Very Few at present)

Lets me talk about college students which form the majority of the class of people doing CP in India. Let me tabulate the possible incentives for a college student to do CP.They are as follows :

  1. Getting a job at google,facebook,amazon etc. and other prestigious companies: However abstract it may seem it is one of the biggest reasons for most college students to do CP. So naturally when it is your biggest reason you only aim at getting an internship/job offer which you might/might not get in your 3rd or 4th year and after that they tend to loose interest from CP. So this incentive is not enough to raise your level after a certain point.

  2. Very few onsite competitions (ICPC/Snackdown/TCO etc. and related onsite competitions) : Ok so this is also an incentive for college students in India to do CP and aim for ICPC(let us take ICPC first) but most of them only target reaching the regionals and not ahead of that plus those who target reaching world finals also only target reaching there…performing there and getting a good rank is something which nobody thinks about.Plus ICPC happens only once an year and hence its excitement is at max for about 30-40 days before the online round(for majority of participants) .Plus the other onsite competetions (There are very few) and they also tend to invite only a very few Indian teams (like in Snackdown very few indian teams are invited for onsites). Beleive it or not but it is a very significant reason- Very few onsite competitions. So the frequency of onsite competitions should be increased by a significant amount and also it will help in spreading the awareness about the essence of CP. Maybe some other onsites may be introduced.

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14

There are very less 7 starer people from india on codechef(i guess 5), we need to increase that rapidly . I mean imagine the situation we have almost 100 people who are 7 starer.There would be a cut throat competition.And in that case even our 7 starer people will try to become better and better.And ultimately coding culture will evolve.So, now the thing comes to ,how
We will make more 7 starer .I am 4 starer and i know the topics which i have to learn like dp ,game theory etc but i am not able to learn them .i have tried to ,but still i was not able to learn .So,what i want is you guys teach us something like a topic and give us a question related on it with 2 or 3 days time , and slowly we all would become better.Also ICPC contest is a team contest and it would be superb if we could have a contest monthly or 2 team contest in a month .And i can guarantee you team contest will have max participation.
Thanks for adressing the issue.

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In India people do competitive programming just to get a good job nothing else. To improve the scenario first we have to change the mentality of the people. If people do competitive programming for knowledge not for good job than their is a chance of improving competitive programming scenario in India.

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Well everyone talking about colleges. I’m a class 10 Indian school student speaking here in a student’s perspective.
Main problems I face:

  • Board exams & Academics.

  • No environment or ecosystem.

  • Parents and Society discouragement.

1.Academics: I had never heard a word related to “Computer” in our curriculum. My friends and I were busy loading paragraphs to our brains literally to dump on the answer sheet. Our outdated education system takes computer science admissions through the marks scored in physics and chemistry! But not with the skill, interest or passion whatever it maybe.
So, students basically doesn’t know anything about programming until they enter engineering college.

We have class 10 board exams, class 11 (in some states) and class 12 board exams. And there is another big brother so called IIT-JEE for which most of the Indian students sacrifice everything. Basically, no student practices coding at the risk of academics.

No time to code.For example, I’m out of my home from 7AM to 8PM everyday for various things like studyhours, coaching centers,exams etc.

No coding environment: I used to stay late nights due to bugs. My parent scold. There is no one to learn with. It is so better if we have a team of coders. Internet or Google is the only way to discuss about a specific problem or solution. No one in my surroundings know about programming. They ask me questions like why I am wasting time with laptop instead of studying. Almost everyone of my friends want to join CS but they don’t know why. usual conversations between me and my friends goes like this:

Me: Hey! what do you want to do in your life?

Friend: I will become a software engineer.(my friends actually doesn’t know what software engineer does.)

Me: But why?

Friend: It’s pretty easy than other jobs. We can sit in an air conditioned room entire the day in front of a computer and we can also earn crores.(Sundar pichai and satya nadella effect!)

Me: Are you really interested in programming?

Friend: Yeah! My father bought me a PC when I was a kid. I used to play games with it. And now I can operate computers and android devices so easily.

Me: My dear friend, There are things beyond operating computers,mobiles and playing games.

Parents & society: My parents say “You should work in a computer repair shop after completing your class 10 exams. That is what you will do if you waste time with laptop” A few months before I drove a hard bargain with my parents to buy me a laptop and they did. Then family members and friends of my parents used to ask some senseless questions to my parents like “He is in class 10. So, he should study hard. why did you buy him a laptop? you are wasting his future.” At some point in my life I used to have thoughts like, "Why am I coding if everyone is opposing?" ***“I should stop coding and start studying so that my parents will be happy”***. The opposing force you get if you do things out of the rat race is unbearable. So, Instead of thinking out of the box, I should go with the rat race and study to score good marks in Physics and chemistry in order to get in to a good college for Computer science undergraduate degree.

I can do anything I want but badly I have to follow the mad INDIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM RAT RACE

Thanking you,
The frustrated Indian school student juggling with coding and academics.

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17

  • Competitiors from Russia, China excel in Competitive Programming because of their strong mathematical background right from the school days. And in India, people are mostly preparing for JEE and learning all the maths stuff during this time which is also not enough for CP.

  • Most students start CP after getting into college after the first or second semester.

  • Even if a student starts CP in school, he/she has the parental and peer pressure of preparing for JEE. There are not many colleges which admit students on the basis of programming skills.

  • When students think they are not improving, they get demotivated and start doing some projects etc and leave it.

  • Some people which continue doing CP are only doing it for high paying job and don’t enjoy it. These people then complain that they are not improving even when they are trying hard.

So only a few people remain who continue,enjoy and have achieved success in CP.

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18

I got to know about coding stuff when i was in engineering 2nd year and didn’t like it coz i couldn’t understand many concepts and so left it within a year.I have read many codes from different users for different problems and also been active in community grups for learning.But couldn"t learn much. From past 2 years i have dedicated my time for coding and but i m still 1 star…rather than growth i had down fall from 3 star -> 1 star…I don’t know what to read or study extra to reach atlst 5 star…Can any1 guide me what actually is required to solve atlst 5 problems in codechef long challenge.As i read about @ 7_star lebron guy,he made it to this far.please guide me what to learn so that i can solve more problems.I tried asking above 5 star guyies and they seems cocky and don"t wanna help coz they think if they had put effort to reach higher rank why teach other,let them struggle and suffer…(I have contacted @murugurelinout (codechef users) and no help from him)
@lebron : if u can help now it wud be great else i will quit coding coz for me their is no growth as compared to others.

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19

Can someone from outside india share how their COACH is helping them in the ICPC preparation.

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Apart from all the points that have already been mentioned, I personally feel that the Seats of CS in top colleges should be separated from normal engineering and have a separate Exam, or may be selection through IOI performances. This would definitely Boost CP along with removing the burdens of Rest subjects. Being from CS in IIT i personally feel that i have wasted years of my life behind the prep of JEE where i no longer need any physics and chemistry. If all i want to do is CS, there should be separate track for that… as we have for any other stream. I started CP only in second Semester in my college, and now am in third. I just wish that somebody would have just mentioned me about this in school. I feel that as long as CS is compared with Other engineerings and is done for ‘good placements’ in India, Nothing changes.

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When I finished grade 10 in 2014, I had no knowledge whatsoever about programming let alone Competitive programming. I was studying the Maharashtra SSC board syllabus. There was literally nothing about programming in the syllabus. That should change. Coding should be taught in secondary school as an elective atleast and exposure to competitive programming should be offered to interested students grade 9 onwards. Maths skills relevant to programming should also be taught to interested students and finally the school must educate the parents of this competitive programming arena through seminars.

P.S. I was introduced to programming in grade 11(junior college).

22

Start with not putting all math problems in important contests like ICPC Preliminaries!
Why?
Because its a programming contest, not a math contest. :slight_smile:

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23

Ha Ha.
Just Include Competitive coding in syllabus of IIT-JEE and you will find out thousands of red coders.

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24

I would like to through light on some issue

  1. Lack of awareness: I have seen many students don’t know about competitive programming. Every college should aware student about competitive programming. They may host college contest on regular bases like 2 times in a month, to understand student how fun is programming is.
  2. Tutorials: Tutorials on basic topic should be provided to student. So, student can learn easily. As i seen the basic problem student faces that they dont know how to code in Competitive programming. So proper tutorial is provided for that.
  3. Time consuming: As for beginners there are some problems which are very complicated and difficult to understand and sometimes difficult to implement. It consumes too much time.

At end i would like to say Competitive programming scenario can only be improved by providing awareness and to let them know that way they know how much fun to code is.

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25

Hello, Instead of thinking of how to improve, why not think of why it is not in being practiced by many people(students) in India. I am a student and I have very few people in my college who really like to code. There are several reasons:

  1. First thing is, our education system do not bother whether we actually learn coding. What matters is, completing syllabus on time. In the end students take courses outside just to land a job.
  2. There is no coding environment, our theoretical knowledge is seen instead of practical knowledge. Most of the students just by heart the programs to pass the exams.
  3. There are very few events which promote CP, many beginners give CP when they cannot solve complex problems in few available competitions online.
  4. Many of people do not learn CP because they think the companies hiring them will train them anyway so why wasting time on learning on their own.
  5. There is no proper guidance for CP. Even I am struggling learning it on my own. There are very few institutions which have qualified Professors who can guide on CP.

These are common problems I found while networking with many people around my city in events and hackathons.

So if there can be some platform for beginners to start CP from beginning where they can get proper guidance, it will create interest in them. The platform may be just a small club or community.

Or if everyone can decide to guide few people(friends), more people will join automatically. I have my own team, which started with 2 members and it has now grown up to 20+ members in few months, and we are learning CP on our own.

26

I think point 2 is the most important. There is absolutely no incentive for school students to study computer science. Even if a student wants to enter a technical stream and even if that stream is CS, only his knowledge of physics, chemistry and maths is used to judge his capabilities.

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27

Yes, it is the BIGGEST hindrance, yet we cannot do anything about it :frowning: . Of course, some admissions are offered on basis of excellent performance in CP (Like direct admission in IIIT-H if you get _____ in IOI or perhaps something like that?) but those options are very limited, and risky. Any parent would want his child to study PCM for a secure future.

And I think I didnt even got to the fact that how “placement” is sometimes the only reason one starts CP in college- we need to work on how user can appreciate it.

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28

Rewards are only given to Top 10/20 coders. I fail to see how removing reward for those top people going to “motivate” the other thousands of coders behind them.

29

You are greatly exaggerating it when you say that it is “integral part of education system” in Russia.

Most of children don’t face it at all during their school years, except of those who attend one of the very few specialized schools which put it into their course (and to me it feels like there are maybe 10 such schools over whole country), or they are doing it on their own.

I’m from Ukraine, and situation here is generally similar. I didn’t know about competitive programming almost till the end of 10th grade - so I discovered it a bit over a year before finishing school.

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And in my case the reason was not education system, but huge effort on popularization of this activity by guys from the university which I later enrolled - they were ICPC Gold medalists a year before that and they did their best to promote competitive programming.

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31

Mate, it’s still better than India. I got to know about arrays at the end of 12th grade!!. I still wish i had got to know about competitive programming earlier.

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@vijju123 I clearly emphasized on giving equal privileges to coders of all countries, so as to attract best coders to increase competition, and those 10-20 coders most of the times goes upto rank 80-100, and indian users coming in top-10 in codechef will not even come in top-50 if the good coders start competing at codechef as you can see from codeforces standings of any competition, none of them makes in the top-50.