Norp's blog

Pupil in 80 days — Day 18
By Norp, history, 7 weeks ago, In English

Hello codeforces!

Today I finished solving yesterday's contest, problem B really helped me understand the concept of "MEX". I decided to search the Internet for sources on this topic and found a lot of useful things about this topic. Although this is not such an important topic for cp, I hope that knowledge of this topic will be useful in future rounds. Also today I was advised to start “Complete Training from Zero”, where, to my surprise, tasks were collected on the topics I needed.

Plans for tomorrow:

Take part in my first unrated round), continue "Complete Training from 0", solve problems from the archive and not be lazy, as I was today.

Till tomorrow!

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7 weeks ago, # |
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By the way, I still haven’t figured out LeetCode. Can anyone explain to me whether I should use it for practice or if it would be a waste of time?

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    7 weeks ago, # ^ |
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    Leetcode is better for preparing for job interviews. The questions are more straightforward and less verbose.

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    7 weeks ago, # ^ |
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    Leetcode is very cool imo. It can be a great introduction to basic DS/A for beginners if used properly. If I were you, I'd go solve the problems from neetcode.io/roadmap (it has explanations) and you will come out of it knowing all sorts of cool things.

    As another user has pointed out, it is more focused on interview prep rather than competitive programming, so it becomes less and less useful for competitive programming as you get better and better at it. It is still a great way to learn DS/A though.

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7 weeks ago, # |
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Better not to give above div 3. You will probably get -ve delta. (As there is lower number of questions you can solve, there won't be much separation of you from people skilled below you).

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    7 weeks ago, # ^ |
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    This is very bad advice, you won't get better by selectively participating in contests. The goal here is to get better, not reach a rating your skills can't back up.

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      7 weeks ago, # ^ |
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      I agree with your opinion, however the blog is about getting a certain rank. And you can always upsolve contests until you can comfortably solve 2-3 questions.

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7 weeks ago, # |
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Can you share the resource for MEX topic.!!

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7 weeks ago, # |
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I believe practicing common themes like number theory, sieves, MEXes, matching brackets etc will yield more gain than abstract topics like DP/greedy/etc. Although doing both in parallel is probably even better

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7 weeks ago, # |
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Since you're new to CP I would recommend doing USACO Guide, it is by far the best roadmap out there.

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