Need Programming Advice

Hi everyone,
I have completed the foundation level section of the resources provided for DSA certification on codechef. But still i dont think im good enough in it as i do face difficulties in solving even EASY tagged question(also managed to solve only 5 of the long challenge qs). Now i was thinking as should i continue to the advanced section there or it would be rather better to take an online course for competetive coding from CodingBlocks,GFG,etc. Since everyone here knows so much about this DSA & coding so please tell me what should i do.

Please Help
Thanks

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Its actually not worth taking those courses. There are awesome blogs on codeforces, you can also visit cp algo site. These are of a higher quality. Try them out and keep going!

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I think you should continue. Courses provide a basic idea for the algorithms.As long as you are getting the basic concepts, its okay. The main problem lies behind it is practicing. Practice a lot on the topic you read till the time you get the feel of the topic.
I would recommend you to try the problems on that topic before you study, think about the approaches to solve the problem. You will get to know the difficulties and this will definitely help you to understand better.

Continue with the practice. Reading or taking courses can often be very passive: you are guided into thinking what the author wants you to. But you do need to learn how to arrive at a solution starting from scratch: making observations, linking them, and then looking for what solves the now well defined problem you have reduced it to. And of course, battling with TLEs and WAs along the way :slight_smile:

I’m not against consuming content - it would make no sense to say so. But don’t devote your entire time to that. Go ahead and learn the basics ideas that are crucial in helping you get somewhere with most of the problems you encounter. You’d find a lot of lists regarding those.

With that, go and attempt problems. It’s possible that you don’t have the necessary knowledge to tackle the ones you attempt, and it’s perfectly fine to read the editorials. Just make sure that you’re not attempting way harder ones and end up reading the editorials for each one without being able to solve. Again, you’ll find a lot of resources regarding proper practice.

On that note, CF blogs are pretty good for this: you’ll find new techniques all the time, along with answers from the most experienced CPers regarding other problems you may encounter.

Also, some easy and easy-medium problems are in fact tricky, to be fair. :sweat_smile: Don’t get too disappointed.

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