Hi guys,
Coding for several years, all I can say is that Competitive Programming is so great that I love it so much, despite my innumerable failures and the enormous amount of time it takes. I have always happily enjoyed it until I read this.
I hate to say this but I have to admit that what other people say about us (or at least me), competitive programmers, is true: We are not so great as we are supposed to be. As a Computer Science student, I feel it myself too. When it comes to learning a new programming language, it has always been so easy for me, but then I recognise that I can only learn as much as the previous one, to compete here on Codeforces, but not anywhere else. I could not build anything useful like an OS or an IDE when I was using Pascal and neither can I now when I have already know C/C++, Python, Matlab, Java... I feel so disappointed about myself.
I also want to build something useful just like when Linus Torvald built his first Linux Kernel. That kernel was written in C, and I know C but I am still unable to do anything similar. I hate this. I hate the feeling of being inferior to those people who called themselves professional programmers. I hate that but how and what can I do?
I hope that some of you have similar feelings like me, and I would like to know your thinking and experience, about how we can go further, go beyond what we currently are.
Thank you for your time and consideration. HAPPY CODING
Auto comment: topic has been updated by duckladydinh (previous revision, new revision, compare).
Well for me I consider competitive programming is just the start, and the best way to start, when you are good at algorithms and you can write what I call "a clean code" then learning anything else would be easier, recently I started to learn how search engines work, and being a competitive programer helped me lot...