Marinush's blog

Ask Me Anything!
By Marinush, history, 7 months ago, In English

Hello Codeforces, as I come with new life experience and a new view to life, I am yet again making an AMA!

Waiting for your questions,

I would like to thank alinp for inspiration. See you at EJOI in Moldova, my lands.

Marinush

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7 months ago, # |
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Who is the greatest footballer of all time and why it's Messi?

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7 months ago, # |
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What is your codeforces account's password ?

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7 months ago, # |
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What path should I follow to become CM asap and what do you think the it will take for me acc to my progress???

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    7 months ago, # ^ |
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    If I may:
    You're trying too hard. Seeing the difficulty of your solved problems, you're clearly doing fine, just, you're solving 1500/1600s when you should probably be focusing more on improving with 1300/1400s first.
    Two things I'd suggest-
    - Refer to this, (You can ignore the Topcoder section)
    - Create virtual contests on vjudge consisting of 5-10 [Rating:Rating+300/400] questions and try to solve them in a window of 2-4 hours; this is similar to what's suggested for the 1900-2200 range in the blog above

    Also, I saw that you're mostly upsolving the next-unsolved question from past contests, that's good. Keep it up 👍
    In addition, once you hit Expert, consider building your own templates/referring to some standard ones, they do help (especially if you want to hit your target rating ASAP)
    A couple for reference:
    - Atcoder Library (Also, I highly recommend Atcoder Beginner Contests for learning, they're great)
    - KACTL

    As for hitting CM, can't comment as everyone's mileage varies, but seeing your practice, you should be hitting Expert soon, possibly by the end of this summer (even if not in rating, surely in skill level — confidently hitting Expert a few contests later)
    Also, do read high rated contestants' code as that helps understand clearer alternatives for implementing ideas

    Edit1: Rating fix
    Edit2: Target Timeline, Others' code

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      7 months ago, # ^ |
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      How did you manage to become CM without solving meaningful number of >=1800 rating problem. Even the count of >=1600 rating solved problem is so low.

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        7 months ago, # ^ |
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        Magic
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      7 months ago, # ^ |
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      warks bro Can you take a look at my profile too? It would be a great help.

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        7 months ago, # ^ |
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        Yeah, sure!
        To be blunt — you just haven't solved enough problems for your rating to be any higher.
        Use Visualizer and check profiles of people in your target rating range. Over a large number of profiles, a general trend that you should notice is that they tend to solve at least ~100-200 problems in the range [Rating-200:Rating+200]
        Of course, you can't just jump to solving ~100 2000 rated problems and see a jump, the growth is gradual.

        There's not really much fault with the way you're practicing, but with <100 problems solved in the [900-200:900+200] range, your rating of 882 is within expectation. With additional practice, you should be good!
        You can also refer to this as it is great advice by a high rated contestant; I found it helpful

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          7 months ago, # ^ |
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          If you don't mind, can you please review my profile as well ?

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            7 months ago, # ^ |
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            Sure!
            For starters, Kudos for solving a good number of problems — that gives you a fair foundation to build upon. Interestingly, while I've mentioned earlier that you're expected to solve ~200 problems in the [Rating-200:Rating+200] range which would place you higher; your rating is probably suffering from a variety of other factors-

            • The cheater wall. Unfortunate as it may be (and I don't really know its current status), as far as I remember, there's a stupid cheater wall around 1700?1800? if you're performing below that, you end up being bashed by a large bunch, and once you're above that, it's smooth sailing.
            • Regarding the first point, don't worry about it too much, with practice, you should be able to overcome it, and it was actually a motivator for me personally.
            • Consistency in general, I see that your performance fluctuates a lot across contests, solving the number of problems that you have should probably translate to at least a consistent 3 in Div.2s
            • A cursory glance at your submissions shows that you're probably not reasoning about your code as much as you should. I'll elaborate on this — basically, it's a pattern that I've noticed among a lot of contestants (and was guilty of this myself); you probably think of a "direction" for the problem, a "hunch" if you will, and dive into implementation head-first; half-way in (or maybe after failing tests) you realize there's an issue! You patch it, repeat, find another issue, and so on, so forth — ending up working with spaghetti code. This ends up with a frustrating cycle that consumes a lot of time (and yields high penalty). If that's the case, then maybe an advice that helped me could help you-
              Learn to reason about your code more. It takes time; maybe write down the logic (especially in case of DP, do write down the states/transitions), and at every step, reason about the information (data) you have and the operations you can perform on it (sort/search/etc), build your solution step by step, and then once you're confident, only then, start implementing.
              This can probably be hard to digest, and it sucks when you're taking more time solving A/B than others who "guess" solutions, but it oftentimes helps avoid unnecessary penalties (and the patch-cycle); it takes time to adapt (I used to jump to guesswork sometimes myself), but in the long-run, once you're used to it, it's a great help, you also learn to reason about your code better and write clean code (spaghetti free!) which saves a lot of time on harder problems
            • Towards writing cleaner code in general — read top contestants' solutions, they often implement ideas in a much cleaner way and adopting such practices helps get rid of a lot of "clutter" that you would otherwise inculcate into your code.
            • For other tips, refer this; it helped me, hopefully it helps you as well.
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          7 months ago, # ^ |
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          Thanks a bunch. That article you mentioned suggested solving atcoder beginner contest(A,B,C fast) for those who are rated 1000-1400 on CF. Have you tried the same? Also I would like to connect with you. I need a friend who is well above me whom I can seek advice from occasionally. send me a 'hi' coz I can't :(

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            7 months ago, # ^ |
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            Yes I did, you can check my (or others') Atcoder activity through Kenkoooo

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              7 months ago, # ^ |
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              Hey, could you please look at my profile too?

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                7 months ago, # ^ |
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                There's nothing odd with your profile. Having solved ~200 problems in the range [1400-1800], your rating of ~1600 is within expectation. You're also upsolving after contests so you seem to be on the right track. Keep it up 👍

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                  7 months ago, # ^ |
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                  Dude chill, Who even are you? It's my AMA

                  Marinush

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                  7 months ago, # ^ |
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                  Thank you!

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                  7 months ago, # ^ |
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                  Marinush His comments are more useful for the community than your retarded post and comments. It is you who needs to chill.

                  Also, you don't need to write your username in your every fucking comment. We can see your username with our own eyes. We are not blind either

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                  7 months ago, # ^ |
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                  can you give me some advice regarding my profile too?

                  I am not able to solve 1700s

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                  7 months ago, # ^ |
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                  can you look at my profile also

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                  7 months ago, # ^ |
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                  Hello warks thanks for reviewing profiles of others and giving them suggestions, can you give me some suggestions as well

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      7 months ago, # ^ |
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      Hi, Can you give me some advice on what should I focus for reaching specialist?

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        7 months ago, # ^ |
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        Solve more problems in the [1200-1600] range. With another ~100 problems, you should be good (as I've mentioned above, you should solve ~100-200 problems in the range [Target-200:Target+200] to achieve the target rating.

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          7 months ago, # ^ |
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          Seeing the thread.. how about me? (P.S. also how to choose problems to solve)

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          7 months ago, # ^ |
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          Hey! Can you check my profile and give me some advices as well, please? >.<

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          7 months ago, # ^ |
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          Sorry to bother you again, but can you check mine too pls??

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      7 months ago, # ^ |
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      Hi warks, you are my friend on cf for more than a year. I have learnt a lot of new things from your elegant java codes. I am a fan of yours.

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7 months ago, # |
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  • How do you train?

  • How much time do you spend on a problem and training as a whole?

  • Is there something you follow while training?

  • How do you learn new topics and how much practice you give to them after learning?

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7 months ago, # |
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your rating: 3/2 th is my dream.

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7 months ago, # |
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  1. How do you approach solving difficult algorithmic problems during a contest?
  2. What do you think are the key skills or qualities that make a successful competitive programmer?
  3. How do you handle moments of frustration or setbacks during contests or practice sessions?
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7 months ago, # |
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Can you give me some problems which can be solved with strongly connected components?

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7 months ago, # |
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In the battle of IDEs, which one would win in a wrestling match: VS Code, PyCharm, or Emacs? And who would be the referee?

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7 months ago, # |
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Can you please review my profile and give some insights, suggestions or advice ? I'm trying to be a Specialist.

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7 months ago, # |
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https://codeforces.net/contests/with/Neogeek

when will my rating go above 1200?

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7 months ago, # |
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In the last div4 I thought that solving 6 was possible .

But i got stuck on a stupid precision error for practically the whole round .

It's seems to be a trend with me to get stuck on small issues when implimenting a solution(wrong implimentation , not noticing the constraints ...).

Any advice to fix this issue ?

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7 months ago, # |
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is it possible to i become candidate master in 3 months from my current rating.

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7 months ago, # |
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I have a bunch:
- What are your observations about the similarities/differences between Olympiads and CF contests/performance?
- What are your opinions on the "type" of blogs that belong in CF recent actions — fun/informative/mix?
- GM in 2024?

Also, sorry for hijacking your AMA with comments. Didn't intend to :/

Edit: Apology

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    7 months ago, # ^ |
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    This blog became more of an orz warks profile review than AMA!

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7 months ago, # |
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How did your coding journey begin?

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7 months ago, # |
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Is this blog merely a futile effort to gain contribution?

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7 months ago, # |
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Hi!

Please look at my profile once. Where am I doing it wrong?

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7 months ago, # |
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pls leave some gold medals for my team

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7 months ago, # |
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Can you please review my profile and give some suggestions or advice ?

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7 months ago, # |
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give roadmap to achieve 1200 — 1500 ratings

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7 months ago, # |
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When you die, would you rather not exist at all or have a 99% chance of going to heaven and a 1% chance of going to hell for eternity?

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7 months ago, # |
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could you please look at my profile too? I'm currently not doing CP due to frustration and suggest me something.

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7 months ago, # |
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Messi or Ronaldo ?

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7 months ago, # |
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How can I murder someone as inconspicuously as possible

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7 months ago, # |
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Warks and also can anyone with enough experience suggest me what to and how to practice by seeing my profile...

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7 months ago, # |
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Tips for becoming expert

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7 months ago, # |
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can you beat me in chess ?

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7 months ago, # |
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Codeforces id & pass plz????

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7 months ago, # |
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how did you practice div 2 Cs

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