Is TopCoder dying? Shall I start participating in Topcoder SRMs in late 2019?

Revision en3, by nocriz, 2019-09-26 11:28:56

TopCoder has been a famous competitive programming platform and I've heard of TopCoder for years. I've never participated in TopCoder rounds though. Like many of my friends, I started to really participate in online rounds since 2018, and Topcoder's fame already seemed to fade.

Last year, I did attempt to participate in a SRM, but I met various difficulties. Possibly I'm not clever enough but participating in SRM is indeed much complicated than participating a Codeforces Round.

  • The java applet was confusing.
  • I didn't know where to find the time of the next SRM. Although I saw posts of SRM announcements on Codeforces, it is usually the day after the round.

A few days ago, I finally find the current Topcoder Competitive Programming Page with the future contest time, solution, problem archive etc. The Link. (Last year, all I found was the arena. That was indeed confusing to me, I never imagined that there is a separate page.) It is finally possible for me to start participating in TopCoder, but I found that on TopCoder, SRM participants in 2019 are typically ~300, while a few years ago there were ~2000 people in a single round.

I'm a bit worried that TopCoder is dying and start participating on a new platform is probably not a good idea for me.

What are your suggestions? Shall I start participating SRMs, and why?

Tags codefocres vs. topcoder, #topcoder

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  Rev. Lang. By When Δ Comment
en5 English nocriz 2019-09-26 11:39:24 0 (published)
en4 English nocriz 2019-09-26 11:38:19 393
en3 English nocriz 2019-09-26 11:28:56 782
en2 English nocriz 2019-09-26 11:21:36 162
en1 English nocriz 2019-09-26 11:18:38 559 Initial revision (saved to drafts)