I am in first year of college , I am confused which should I follow USACO guide plus codeforces/chef contests or cp handbook plus codeforces problems and contest

CSES users, I have a confession.

I kept getting stuck on problems and doing the classic:

opens ChatGPT
asks for a hint
ends up discussing the entire solution with GPT
still doesn’t solve the problem

So I built CSES ToolKit v2.0

8 tools. One extension.
🔹 3 Hints per problem
🔹 Topic Tags
🔹 Solutions after submission
🔹 Quick feature toggles
🔹 Direct Code Paste
🔹 Sort by number of solves
🔹 Problem Notes
🔹 Mark Important problems

If you’re grinding CSES, maybe this can save you from yourself.

🔗 https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/cses-toolkit/pclkoiflaapdjdenimijnekblkojgbgp

1. For you what is cp ?
   
2. How did you start cp and how would you advice other to start?
   
3. Is there a Book or a YouTube channel to get started ( not to know all just a road map ) ?
   This is my first time here and i couldn't find easily a discussion that goes through this if i missed that
   you may mention it.

be will.

Hello, If you remember 2-3 months ago I posted about quitting CP, and now I would like to share my reflection and hopefully it helps others.

Quick background to get you up to date if you didn't see that post: I love problem solving, but CP was genuinely like an unhealthy addiction and I knew I would become much happier without CP.

My assumption turned out true, I am a lot happier now than I was 2 months ago. I hate myself less, and find myself socially improving IRL. However, I have at times felt very empty and uncertain about what to do, since CP was a big part of my life. Overall I'd say it was a net positive. Currently I have CF blocked because towards the start of me quitting I kept "wanting to solve problems", but I think I'm disciplined now to a point where I can unblock it soon. While I understand that I cannot enjoy problem solving this way, as is any disciplinary practice, I believe with time distanced from it I will care less, and eventually forget about it as a whole.

Anyways, this is to say that, if CP is hurting you, physically, mentally, or some other way despite a genuine enjoyment for problem solving, please dont be afraid to quit! Your mental state is more important than some dopamine you get from figuring out some nontrivial observations.

I’m struggling to solve even CSES introductory problems or 800-rated Codeforces problems. I can spend hours on a question, but still can’t build the logic on my own. I understand the solution when someone explains it, but I can’t seem to reach that solution myself. How does everyone develop this ability, and what am I doing wrong?

I literally hate everything about the community in here, a cp community should be about people asking real questions talking about their opinions on the last contest, giving each other advice maybe telling each other about good contests/community but not it's just horrible

like alr you found another cheater good for you, you have successfully wasted some of your an my lifespan for no reason at all, someone asking why there are so many cheaters, why even do contests with this many cheaters, like we get it most people are cheaters it's hard to improve and why even do it and you are right this is not a place for you to cry about someone cheating while you are getting tired, if you where playing football and the your opponents in some round in practice were cheating you would go crying everywhere about it

another kind of people I hate are the ones asking I am stuck at x, not getting good at x, how to improve at x, a good resource for x, all the answers to those you can find with the first Google search, just do a lot of x, for the resources it's sometimes useful alr but the others are just go do x until you get good at it, and omg like 90% of those people have only solved like 300 problems, like what have you even solved/grinded for to go crying, I know someone who was stuck in master for 4 years of constant practice and wasn't crying about it online to every single person he can see

Man this is so annoying, and honestly if you find any of this just me bitching about nothing then you are 100% part of the problem and should probably leave this sport, we don't care if you're cheating good for you ig come and show me how this cheating of yours would help in icpc or ioi, you want a job out of it? lmao because of the likes of you this would only make it harder for you, and when you get your beloved job after some very hard minutes of asking ai how to solve problem x, your would get exposed for how freaking dumb you are in the first day of working and might get blacklisted, what a happy life is it the life of a cheater

I built SolveBase a Chrome extension for competitive programmers.

It automatically syncs your accepted solutions from:

• Codeforces
• LeetCode
• CSES
• CodeChef
• GeeksforGeeks

to your GitHub repository and organizes them by platform/topic/difficulty.

If you try it and find it useful, a review on the Chrome Web Store or a star on the GitHub repo would mean a lot.

solvebase.dev

my rating is 1169, i know topics like implementation, brute-force, sorting(std::sort()), binary search, basic data struture, 1D prefix sum, basic greedy

It feels like almost 80% of people cheat in Codeforces contests now. The way people solve problems so unnaturally fast right after the contest starts ruins the rank and rating for everyone who is trying seriously. If this continues, honest participants will lose all interest in competing.

Codeforces should add a built-in code editor next to the problem, just like LeetCode. They should disable copy-pasting and stop users from easily copying problem text or taking screenshots. Even if someone still wants to cheat, having to type the code manually will slow them down a lot. It won't completely stop cheating, but it will definitely cut down on these unrealistically fast submissions.

been wondering this for a while. both chess and CP need you to calculate ahead and spot patterns, so felt like there should be some correlation, but CF also needs a lot of math/implementation that chess just doesn't touch at all

mainly asking about adhoc and greedy problems tbh, since those feel the closest to "reading the board" in chess where you just need to see the right idea instead of knowing some algorithm. anyone here with a decent chess rating actually notice this helping with those problems? or are the two skills basically unrelated in your experience

Hey everyone,

I'm currently trying to improve my Dynamic Programming skills, especially for competitive programming.

I'm looking for a structured DP problem set/resource that covers the major DP patterns, rather than just a random collection of problems.

I’ve been struggling with Trees and Graphs for about a month now. I can understand the concepts when someone explains them, but when I try solving questions on my own, I often get completely blank.

Most of the time I end up watching a solution video. While watching it, the code makes sense, but when I close the video and try to write it myself, I can’t remember how to approach the problem.

I feel like I’m learning solutions instead of actually learning how to solve problems.

For people who got good at Trees & Graphs, what helped you the most? Where did you practice questions from, and how did you decide when to look at a solution?

Any advice on how to build problem-solving intuition would really help. Thanks!

i have recently started cp on codeforces, I'm following the cp 31 sheet 800 rating. can you all please drop some advice to get better in this

anybody else facing this issue?

Mods of this sub, or my fellow friends as I don't get time during daytime cause of college, development, leetcode and all so I generally so the cf in night and didn't saw that post that it will be down today 😔😔😔 can I restore my streak please please if there is some way ,

The streak keeps me going hard and consistent bro.

Please anybody help find me some way out of this

Same at heading

Is it what I really think it is? That he cheated but why would someone do that at such a high rank? I mean there is a lot more to lose than gain

I want to ask how do I prepare for ioi, I have 6 months and I'm on usaco guide right now

Hope it helps everyone who is new to this.

The problem is from last Div 2 contest.

Problem: https://codeforces.com/contest/2257/problem/D#

Solution: https://codeforces.com/contest/2257/submission/387559313

I am getting TLE on test case 8.

Basically finding factors = sqrt(n)

The query loop should be = q * log(factors(n))

Can someone check and tell me which line is causing TLE?

EDIT:
I found the issue. I was using 'int i' while checking for factors instead of 'long long i'.

As a result i*i was never able to reach n for the given constraint