The Beginning of My Competitive Programming Journey

MOHAN KUMAR A — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 02:18:46 +0000

I've decided to take competitive programming seriously.

I've been practicing DSA for a while, but I realized that solving problems casually and actually solving them in a contest are two very different things.

So I decided to start participating in coding contests and see how far I can take it.

I'll be practicing on platforms like:

Codeforces
CodeChef
LeetCode
AtCoder
HackerRank

My main goal right now is to become consistent and improve my problem-solving speed. Eventually, I'd like to start getting Top 1000 ranks in contests and keep improving my rating.

I'm currently focusing on topics like:

Arrays and Strings
Hashing
Sorting and Searching
Binary Search
Two Pointers
Sliding Window
Recursion and Backtracking
Linked Lists
Stacks and Queues
Trees and Graphs
Greedy Algorithms
Dynamic Programming

I know it's going to take time. There will probably be contests where I barely solve anything, plenty of wrong submissions, and problems that I won't understand on the first try 😅.

But that's part of the process.

Instead of just looking at the number of problems I've solved, I want to understand my mistakes and improve with every contest.

At the same time, I'll continue working on development projects because I want to build both strong problem-solving skills and practical development skills.

I'll share my progress here as I go.

Let's see how far I can get. 🚀

competitiveprogramming #dsa #programming #softwaredevelopment

DEV Community: MOHAN KUMAR A

The Beginning of My Competitive Programming Journey

competitiveprogramming #dsa #programming #softwaredevelopment