 What's up guys, Mike the Coder here. You know, today I'm gonna talk about something that why I hate competitive programming or why competitive programming sucks. Now, this isn't something that I'm gonna bash a video to bash competitive programming. I think competitive programming is very, very fun. And to be honest, I think I do enjoy like doing it. I enjoy problem solving, but here's are the main reasons why I don't really enjoy competitive programming at the latest from someone who's been doing just grinding problems for the past year or so. So without further ado, let's get into this video. First thing why competitive programming sucks is that there's no really set curriculum in competitive programming. Now before you guys go to the keyboard and start bashing and telling me, Oh, but Michael, there's a CSES problem sets and there's also some some USACO training pages. Well, yeah, you are right. There are there are some problem sets that have like, I don't know, a certain certain number of problem sets that you could do. In fact, even on like competitive programming three handbook, there they there are some problem sets that you could use. But the thing is that most of these problem sets, there's really no set curriculum and competitive programming. A lot of it is just like solving random problems or solving problems relating to certain topics until you get the hang of it. And you could technically drill through different topics. And but the thing is that there is really no set curriculum. There's no set syllabus that we're like in a course and a math class or anything like a physics class where you could just go through one by one and then just understand what's going on. Like a lot of these topics and competitive programming interweave interchanges together. Like just because you know segment trees does not necessarily mean you could solve like a problem involving segment trees, two pointers and hashing, you know what I mean? Like if just because like a lot of these topics interweave together. So there is really no set curriculum. The thing that would that if you just follow these certain guidelines will become the certain ranking or certain level. Also, the second thing that sucks about competitive programming is that it's not really popular. If besides like besides in Russia and India, competitive programming is not really popular in US. Like unless you've done math competitions in like high school or middle school, you would not know what USACO is. Like unless like you had a teacher telling you, hey, this is what you could do in high school competitive programming or like you learned or figured out or someone told you about competitive programming in middle school or high school. Then you would not know anything about competitive programming because it's just not popular in the US. Like most people like I didn't know about competitive programming until like I read this core post in like the junior year of college, right? And at this point, like if you try to do it to like improve your interview skills is at this point, it's already too late. When you think about it, like a competitive program takes like years to master at least like two or three years to get to like a super high level. So like it really if you haven't had a head start when you're younger, it kind of just sucks as you're older because you feel like you're kind of missing out. The third thing that sucks about competitive programming is that training for competitive programming takes a long, long time. And I don't just mean by like doing a contest, just one contest already takes two hours. And if you're also talking about up solving, that takes even more longer. So like if you really want to improve, it could take more than like five hours a day or give or take of up solving and doing contests. Because you're not only trying to learn new things, but you're also trying to implement new things and try to solve problems you couldn't solve before during the contest. So competitive programming takes a long, long time to get better. Like I know that there are some people who improve significantly really fast, but in general, like to the average Joe, competitive program would take a while to master, especially all these algorithms and data structures and math properties that you have to know. And this gets to my fourth point that what I don't like about competitive programming. Okay, the fourth thing, the next thing that I don't like about competitive programming is that the community kind of treats the people who are super high level like their gods. Like I'm not sure why this is a thing, but for some reason people who like are super, super high level in competitive programming are treated like gods. And there's a lot of something called radists, in which in case like people look down on others who like have lower level than them. I'm not sure if this is a pride thing when they're able to solve something faster or better than other people. But in general, in my point of view, if you go on any of the code forces, like if you try to type in an article or you type in a comment, and you're like green or blue and you're trying to help other people out, you're probably going to get downvoted. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm literally not kidding. If you're gray, green or blue, and you're not in division one and you put a comment trying to help someone, you're probably going to get downvoted. Okay, it's like the contribution, your contribution is going to go down. All right, now if you were orange or red and you post like some post, you're going to get a ton of upvotes. It's just what it is. So competitive programming has a lot of like radists. All right, there's a lot of people who are radists out there. And that's another thing that I don't like about the competitive programming community is just radism. You know, thinking they're, I don't know, holier than thou or something. And I know it's not all people, but it is something that I see. The last and final thing that sucks about competitive programming is that competitive programming is really only beneficial for entry level interview jobs. And I literally mean by that. I mean like entry level jobs for like your entry level software engineer jobs at FANG, like that require those certain interviews with algorithms and data structures. Competitive programming would not help you when you're like later on in your career path. When you have to do like a ton of development or when they ask you about like systems design questions or certain like design patterns. Like it will not is the competitive programming having more knowledge in this will not help benefit you in terms of this part of the interview process. So competitive programming is really only beneficial when you to solve a certain task under a certain time constraint. And that that's something that you probably will never encounter in your actual day to day job in your actual day to day job as a developer. So competitive programming would not benefit you after school. Like there's a reason why most people who do competitive programming when they're still in college or in high school or middle school is because they have a lot of time to do it. Right. If you think you could do well in competitive programming like after graduation when when you have a full time job. I wish you the best of luck because that's very very difficult. If you have to do with like an eight hour day from nine to five job and then trying to deal improve your competitive programming after work without like actually learning new things new technologies and learning new software development. That would actually benefit your career path or your career job in the future in the long run that would it would take too much time of your hands. OK. Like trying to learn a new angular framework or a new JavaScript framework or a new like C++ library or something or the new shell code or something. Trying to learn all these things after work to help benefit your career path in your current job while you're working and do competitive programming is going to be ridiculously hard. OK. So there's a reason why most people do competitive program when they're students because they have a lot of time for it after college and when you after graduating and when you have a job. It is very difficult to stick to grinding problems on competitive programming and even the time zones of where these contests start. Like certain time zones are very difficult to even do on like code forces or at code or where like sometimes the time zones might interfere with your job when during at work unless you do unless you do the contest while you're at work. But in which case that would that's also jeopardizing your job also. So competitive programming is very difficult to do after when you graduate and it's only certainly for students for entry level jobs actually. But yeah that's the main reasons why I think what sucks about the harsh realities of competitive programming. Hope you guys enjoy this video. Ray come subscribe. I'll check you guys later. Peace.