I am a first year ECE undergrad at IIIT Trichy and today I will be sharing with you my experience as a candidate at the coding contest held in our college.
Coming from an ICSE board I was already familiar with computers and coding as I was taught C++ in 8th and Java in 9th and 10th.I was very keen to participate and see how it feels to compete in coding therefore I registered in the contest and it was a group contest and I shared the group with a couple of 3rd year undergrads and 1 2nd year student.I cant explain how shocked I was when I saw their thinking process and speed.I was basically blown away and I started thinking do I even stand a chance in this coding world where there are thousands and lakhs of such students.
We stood 2nd place and after the contest I reached out to some seniors who were very good at coding and discussed the questions asked and upsolved them.I then asked them how to approach a question and which coarse or guide to follow to become good at coding.They suggested that I should learn basics of any language which I already had and asked me to start DSA.Striver and Love Babbar were the two creators whom they asked me to follow.
This contest not only helped me make contacts with my seniors but also made me realise no one becomes good at something by just daydreaming about it.I feel blessed that I got that advice and started DSA, now I have near about 300 questions solved on GFG .Hope this article was helpful in the sense that you can achieve anythin if you know the right path or are willing to.
Thank You
Aditya Raj