19th July, 2013: Today was SRM (Single Round Match) 585 in TopCoder. The event was scheduled at 20.30 IST (Indian Standard Time ‘+0530 GMT’). Registrations started about 3 hours before the event. This was my first event on TopCoder. I used to practice on TopCoder and had solved around 25 problems until my first event. This helped me to get an idea about how the problems would be. Today when I opened the arena and thought about solving few practice problems. I was surprised to see only two problems in the practice room, others were temporarily disabled due to the active contest going to begin in some time.
Today was the first TopCoder event for all my peers too. It was a great experience for all of us.
We get about 75 minutes to solve three problems, point for each question ranging from 250 (difficulty: easy), 500 (difficulty: intermediate), and 1000 points (difficulty: advanced). Each contestant has to be mentally prepared, and a good knowledge of Mathematics is the most important factor here as well as good knowledge about coding and various methods that we can use like algorithms(shortest way possible), etc. I was able to solve one problem (250 point) and was able to submit it within 15 minutes and achieve 230 points. I was happy that I could do atleast one question and submit it that too in such a short period of time. Also I was able to solve 90% of the 500 point problem. I couldn’t complete the solution and submit it as time allotted for coding phase was over and it was time for us to check out other coders solution and challenge them if we feel that their code will fail a particular test case.
I was able to successfully submit the 500 question solution later in practice session and this boosted my confidence about coding and problem solving.
Everyone who have passion and interest for coding and problem solving should atleast once try out TopCoder or any of the other online contests like CodeChef, HackerRank, etc.
P.S: Was hiding in my drafts, the reason behind the late post. Anyways Happy Hacking \m/
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