A Code Daily

Hello LinkedIn! Today, after a rigorous 23-𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡 journey, I’ve finally reached the 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭 level in Codeforces! 🎉 This journey has been incredibly rewarding, filled with valuable lessons that I hope will inspire others in their CP path. In September 2022, I picked up 𝐉𝐚𝐯𝐚. My curiosity led me to write basic code on day one, and I was hooked! I quickly learned Java up to basic OOP concepts but then had to pause for 4-5 months to focus on college applications. Unfortunately, without a JEE score, I didn’t secure a college spot, so I considered a gap year. With only 2-3 months left, JEE prep felt impractical, and that’s when I discovered competitive programming. CP felt like a unique challenge, with the added bonus of improving job prospects, so I committed myself fully to it. Initially, I was doing things wrong—I rushed to check editorials and often submitted the exact same solutions without really understanding them. After a few months, I came across A Code Daily on YouTube and joined their community. There, I found the Hard75 bot, which really changed the game for me. Solving problems with its guidance helped me improve, and after around 13 months, I achieved the 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 level. From there, I aimed for 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭. I started solving 1400-1600 rated problems, took tons of virtual contests, and pushed through Div.3 virtuals and tougher problems (1400-1800 range). Progress wasn’t linear, but today, I achieved my Expert rating, and it’s an amazing feeling. Looking back, I remember starting CP with the hope of just reaching 𝐏𝐮𝐩𝐢𝐥 level one day. Now, as an 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭, I’m more motivated than ever—I want to reach 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 by next year! A huge shoutout to Pranav Mehta, Vivek Gupta, and Abhishek Saini, Sir—your support to the CP community has made a difference for many, including me. The knowledge, guidance, and motivation you’ve shared have helped us all reach new levels. Thanks also to my friends Utkarsh Mudgal and Adwiteek Samadder for all the problem discussions and late nights. You guys have made this journey so much more enjoyable and impactful!  Competitive programming has taught me resilience, patience, and consistency. If I, once struggling in 𝐉𝐄𝐄, can succeed in 𝐂𝐏, so can you. Stay curious and keep grinding! Best of luck to everyone chasing their dreams! #codeforces #codechef #atcoder #gfg #leetcode #cfbr #connection #coding #algorithm #cp #competitive #competitiveprogramming #beginner

Hi folks, some helpful content upcoming for you guys (sys design related)! Would love to have your advice/opinion on this. A bit of context (why this image): I started A Code Daily in Jan, 2023 with 1 member (me) but today we are a community of ~15k coders (all just with word of mouth), now the largest Indian CP community. I am grateful that all the efforts (by everyone at ACD) helped thousands in achieving what they wished (related to CP or even placements). All these moments like the Codeforces pic (attached), or getting DMs regarding how ACD resources have helped them were truly heart-warming for me and thanks a lot for it. But I think the community can self sustain now, we've enough volunteers, I no longer need to put in consistent efforts (haven't been putting much since a very long time now primarily due to being busy). All the resources one would ever need have already been developed and organised, so any additional efforts from my side are not gonna create any significant impact. Based on the conversations I have had with students, 1 thing I truly believe could be impactful and helpful to freshers are resources and a dedicated community for system design. I am thinking of creating a community (similar to ACD) where we could tackle it ground up, break abstractions 1 at a time, learn both HLD, LLD and most important of all how systems work in entirety with a more hands on approach with live sessions. Needless to say this would be a free community (for freshers), having frequent sessions related to sys design, this would cover all sorts of basics you might need to understand as freshers. But going over the resources I realised I myself need to fill my own tech gaps first before imparting any knowledge hence am gonna take a couple of months to becoming better at it (I barely have any bandwidth so will need to take it slow), hence this community would begin most likely in a couple of months. I would love to have your opinion on this, if this is something you feel would be helpful for you or if something can be improved to make it better. How does this idea sound as whole? Please lmk your opinion irrespective of your experience. Thanks!

Hey coders! I’m thrilled to introduce the latest analytics feature on ACD Ladders V2 (https://lnkd.in/gGGUXqqg) 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲𝘀: 1. Submission Analytics 2. Contest Analytics  a) Problems Submissions Analytics  b) Users Rank Analytics 📊 Building submission analytics was pretty easy, but building contest analytics was more challenging. It required a better understanding of data structures and algorithms. 📝 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀: 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 Problem Statement: You have a contest with M problems, running for T minutes, and N users, numbered from 0 to N-1. Given an array solutions, where each element is a pair: t (time in seconds) at index 0 and p (points) at index 1, each user solves problems. You need to return an array of size T where the i-th index represents the number of submissions made up to the i-th minute for each problem. Constraints: M ≤ 10 N ≤ 15 * 10³ T ≤ 180 For any user i, total points P ≤ 10⁵ 💡Approach: Maths + Prefix Sum Time Complexity: O(M*N) Space Complexity: O(T) Start with result = [0] * (T + 1). Iterate through users' solved problems. If a problem is solved at time t, calculate the corresponding minute t_min = math.ceil(t/60) and increment result[t_min] by 1. Perform a prefix sum to get the number of problems solved up to each minute. 📝 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀: 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗥𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 Problem Statement: Similar to problem submissions analytics, but instead of counting submissions, determine each user's rank at every minute during the contest. Given an array U of users, return an array of size T for each user U[i], where the j-th index represents their rank at the j-th minute. Constraints: M ≤ 10 N ≤ 15 * 10³ T ≤ 180 U ≤ 10 For any user i, total points P ≤ 10⁵ 💡 Approach: Maths + Fenwick Tree + Map Time Complexity: O(M*N + max(P) + T*U*log(max(P))) Space Complexity: O(M*N + max(P)) First, create a time series array where the i-th element contains pairs of (user, points) representing users who solved problems at time i. To find the rank of user x with p points at time t, calculate the number of users with more than p points rephrased as total users - users with points ≤ p. Finding the number of users with points less than p is a common problem in competitive programming and can be efficiently solved using a Fenwick tree. To keep track of each user's total points, we use a map. By processing each minute sequentially, we can calculate and update the rank for all users, resulting in a rank array for each user at every minute of the contest. A big thank you to Shubham Pandey for their contribution 🙏. 🚀 Elevate your coding experience with ACD Ladders V2! 💻 Join us on discord : https://lnkd.in/gM4PuB45 #dsa #cp #programming #codeforces #web #dev #development #webdevelopment #ACD #ACodeDaily

𝗕𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗖𝗣 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 ❤️ We often have a lot of doubts when we start something new, often these doubts are enough to hold us back. I had a lot of such doubts when I started A Code Daily on 1st Jan, 2023; but I wanted to give it a honest shot and build a free community which aims to improve the competitive coding culture in India specially for tier-3 folks. I still remember having just 1 person on the server (me); who had no knowledge about discord and it's potential, but the community grew so much that now we are at 13.5k+ (with just word of mouth). It wasn't an easy journey and most of the credits goes to the contributors most of whom joined the community as CP beginners but started enjoying the culture, got the required support by more experienced folks (initially just me but a lot many now), thereby reaching expert on CF in a few months, and then helped others invigorating this amazing helping culture! It has been a great experience and the impact it has on the countless lives feels personal (from up-levelling on various CP platforms to cracking their dream organisations), I hope this growth continues and that we are able to help even more souls. Let me know if there's anything more which can be improved! 🙂 link: https://lnkd.in/dy9-fUge

Have recently been tagged in several posts and have received numerous messages on all social asking to post about the rampant cheating in CP and OAs. I was a bit hesitant at first as I am not actively participating (hence I wasn't totally aware about the ground reality), and I firmly believed that cheating would only impact non serious coders as harder problems are mostly never leaked, however this doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I observed the contest on Codeforces yesterday and was surprised at the scale at which cheating groups operate. The solution from A-D were leaked on Telegram and even on Youtube (someone livestreamed most likely for some petty views). D problem being leaked implies people who might've reached experts would be negatively affected (as thousands were able to do D), and I consider experts and above to be serious coders. The same goes for OAs, dedicated groups for each org provide the required support for solving OAs on your behalf. This has worked well, as the OAs have become significantly harder than the actual interviews itself. In CP these people have improved their methodologies and they now send you solutions of other coders, from the CF hack rooms, which helps them avoid plags and costs plags to honest coders! Before blaming all these group owners, streamers and "help providers", we need to blame ourselves I believe! Over the past few years people have started correlating a good CP ratings to good placements, however in reality both are just a result of having good skills. Soon CP ratings became a filter for getting referrals (I too used it as a filter for referrals at Microsoft because of it being convenient). CP is a sport and helps you improve your skills but viewing the ratings as the path to success has been the biggest reason for the current situation. It affects almost every serious candidate and demoralises them into thinking low about themselves because of no growth (cheaters take all the positive deltas without any effort). Platforms are now thinking of banning our beloved nation, says volumes about the kind of impact we had on CP as a nation. Solution? Sadly, there's none! People would keep doing these things for bragging about their ratings and/or clearing exams. It becomes a responsibility of each one of us to understand the pros/cons of our acts and propagate the morality to our juniors (hence this post). It's far better being a honest pupil than being a cheater expert, having more wisdom and less regrets. That all being said, don't be demotivated, ratings really don't matter much. If you are highly concerned about the ratings then try becoming better and faster than people who actually leak the solutions! Once you do that you'll surpass these people and the thousands of coders who rely on such solutions. It's not that there's no hope, it's just that it's harder now! Keep coding, you'll reach there soon.

Hi folks, We at A Code Daily have updated the ACD Ladders! ACD Ladders till now has done far better than we ever anticipated and has more than half a million footprint spanning across 80+ countries! The ladders now includes problems from important concepts of CP and constructive algorithms. The recent trend of increasing constructive nature of problems being asked requires considerable practice of similar topics which is hard to be accomplished using only good old problems thereby this update should help you all become better at CP! You could read more about the algorithm used for the ACD Laddders here: https://lnkd.in/gi5ZXUeb , we processed data of more than 60k active users this time to come up with the recent problemset. I often see people on LinkedIn posting about achievements in CP after utilising solutions from Telegram, this is true for even popular accounts having following of more than 50k, I hope these efforts from ACD team help you become better coders in reality and you aren't required to pretend being one by using paid solutions! CP is a game don't ruin it! Hope this update helps, let me know your experience with ACD Ladders till now! #CP #codeforces #ladders #problemset #practice #cheating

Incase you missed! Here's livestream by Pranav Mehta and Stefan Dascalescu, on competitive programming! About Stefan: Speaker at IOI 2023, global top ~500 (ATH) at Codeforces. 10+ years of experience in CP and coaching! https://lnkd.in/g-Y76E6e

We are a community of 11k+ now! 🎉 Word of mouth would always outweigh any sort of PR marketing. PS: having all palindromes is a coincidence! link to join: https://lnkd.in/dy9-fUge

Solving X number of problems on LeetCode doesn't necessarily mean that you are good at DSA! I've solved ~2k problems on LC and probably 3k+ problems (all platforms combined), still someone who has solved a fraction of these problems might be a better problem solver than me if he has covered the necessary topics with the required understanding. A few pointers: 1. focus on understanding the fundamentals of the problem rather than increasing your problem count just to mention on the resume. 2. Contest rankings would always speak more about your problem solving skills, so try to focus on them! 3. Don't just solve easy problems for increasing the count. Go after medium-hard problems to test your knowledge. Hope this short post was helpful!

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐀 𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞❓ Recently 3-4 peeps asked me how I used A Code Daily Discord Server such that I helped me in growing. So I’ll answer from the very start so that you can get the answer to all your queries in this single post. 1. Be active in the server’s general chat first. You’ll find people discussing awesome problems and more awesome solutions. There are peeps ranging from Unrated to IGM chatting there. 2. Use the Hard-75 Bot to practice problems as that bot got the best problem filtered out for every rating. If that’s completed, seek the problems from ACD ladders (Going to be updated soon). 3. If stuck on any problem or you have the passion to help others, explore the dsa-cp-doubts channel in the server. My 80% growth’s credit goes that channel itself. 4. Participate in post contest discussion after every contest. There will be people discussing already on every problems and you can upsolve seeing the ideas or explanation in the chat. Above mentioned points are something which I myself followed and is following till date in the server. They helped in becoming someone who even gave once Master-level performance in contest from someone who barely gave pupil level performance. If you have any further doubt, you can write it down in the comment section or ping me directly on Discord. Link for Discord Server 🤖: https://lnkd.in/g3byr6df #cp #competitiveprogramming #codeforces #acd