How to improve the competitive programming scenario in India

From @lebron 's answer, I think one of the major difference is interaction of people with top coders, and frequency of camps. While I dont know exact number of camps held per year, I can definitely say that they arent much in frequency- and if they are- then again, awareness issue is grave here.

Basically increasing rewards. Yes, the points you said are valid.Not sure to what degree they are implementable, but the concerns are worth addressing.

On site competitions face some issues. Like, proper arrangements for venue, some candidates not coming due to high travelling costs etc.

And we cant say ā€œThere arent enough contests heldā€ as well. Join enough number of sites, theres a contest going on at one site or other 85% of time.

The issue boils down to, again, we can only spoonfeed you that much. After that if you lose motivation, or loce incentive, then we cannot do much about it.

Like, in your argument- why are you favoring onsite contest over online ones? One contest or other keeps happening, but not many will participate diligently. Thats the problem. We can provide spark for fire, but thats it.

@lebron okay I may have exaggerated but I only said this because thatā€™s what I heard from other top coders. But still the amount of awareness and enthusiasm about CP in Russia is much greater than in India.

Onsite contests tend to boost motivation much more. Also for a lot of onsite competitions there are usually sponsors covering travel expenses for finalists (at least up to some extend) - so if you manage to organize it this way, it should be really nice.

4 Likes

And regarding reasons for better motivation - well-organized onsite competition is a way to spend time nice, to meet new people etc., there are lots of small pros on this side. Like, what sounds better - ā€œI did CodeChef contest with tourist! And 5 thousand other guysā€¦ā€ or ā€œI was at SnackDown, and I saw tourist himself thereā€? In countries like Russia top contestants are active part of community, so itā€™s not a big deal meeting/talking to tourist or Petr etc. even when you are not so strong.

3 Likes

Yeah, it probably was an awareness issue, but donā€™t you think that the awareness issue is the major roadblock for CP in India? I donā€™t blame education system at all, but want to convey that the very idea to improve the lower bound of competitive programming would be to create awareness. Maybe holding quaterly contests with prizes, recognition can do the trick. If education system doesnā€™t include CP, then we have to attract people to CP. No oneā€™s gonna wake up by himself and start doing coding.

The way is to induce people to code :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Yes, I agree with those points. Interaction is bound to have a good effect. Yes, sponsered ones should be feasible for codechef as well. Lets see, I think they can do something in this field.

Yes thats why I explicitly mentioned onsites. There is a way big difference between an online and an onsite in terms of incentive to participate. Plus there are a lot of onsites happening (agreed) but almost all of them are restricted to participation only from that particular instituion.If they are sponsored well and conducted at some good level then it is bound to become popular and will definitely be a boost for all the coders.

Maybe Codechef can coordinate with some of the colleges to make their annual coding contest a national(or state) affair.It will result in bringing all the good coders of that region under one roof and will really be a good incentive for all the coders out there.

Being a college student(I am from NSIT btw) and having organised the annual coding contest of my college I feel the enthusiasm with which the people come for onsite is way greater than that for an online contest (For ex the coding contest of our college was scheduled for 9AM and yet all the good coders of college came to participate.Instead had it been a codeforces div2 or cookoff not these many people would have given that).But again most of the participants were from the instituion itself.

what about team contest?

And i donā€™t believe in spoonfeeding. I thought that might be a helpful idea.After all it was just a feedback.

Yes, the team contest suggestion is good.

Look, basically what happens is, when you give feedback out of which the other person can only derive ā€œHe needs spoonfeeding, thats the problem,ā€ then frankly he wont do anything about it. He cannot spoon feed, and even if he can, he ought not to. Like, you said 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 , if you think from codechefā€™s perspective, it is tough,time-consuming and well, such things are usually done by people to earn money.

I mean, it comes across as you dont want to do anything by yourself, we should teach you, then give you problem, solution and help you debug and do everything else and only then you will do it. That sounds really bad.

1 Like

I vote for the appropriate fraction of laddus idea depending on the rank obtained in a contest. The current policy of cash rewards to top 3 performers may stay. But I support the idea of distributing appropriate laddus to remaining top performers or T-shirts, and it would be motivating as it will give a feeling of earning something.

3 Likes

Your response is a comment. Please put it under admins postā€™s comment section.

5 Likes

As you mentioned about serious training campsā€¦these are very few in India(I can hardly recall only the codechef training camp which happens in june).I also believe there should me more and frequently.Also as you mentionedā€¦the incentive by naming company is also not the solution according to me.

Let me take up a person X. He is in college(assume 2nd or 3rd year) and he is doing competitive for about an year and has become quite good at it.Let some of his friends are in the development side and are winning hackathons every single week(yes they happen this frequently).So What is gonna happen next? He is bound to loose motivation because the competitive guy is not winning anything that significant so frequently.This happens with many people(I have seen many).

2 Likes

For such low numbers of red coders in India (the second most populous country in the world), I think the reason is lack of awareness (especially in the early stages when we are in schools or colleges).

I have also met some great software developers who arenā€™t into CP, and when I asked them about it, most of the responses I hear are like - ā€œItā€™s fun, I did participate a couple of times but I am not creating or innovating a new product using CPā€.