Programming Guide to Absolute newbies

I have got messages from many students in different years of their undergraduate asking for a direction to start in the world of competitive programming and subsequently achieve their career goals. Though I am not the best person to guide someone regarding this, I'll do my bit to share my experience with the aspirants out there.

For freshman (1^st year students)

First of all, focus on your college curriculum. If you don't get satisfied with the teachings of your professor, try to find similar courses on MOOC platforms like Coursera, edX, udacity, etc. Learn a programming language like C++ or Java especially for competitive programming. You can also learn C, Python, or other development languages.

Some reference material for C++

https://developers.google.com/edu/c++/

Beginning C++ Programming - From Beginner to Beyond

For Sophomores  (2^nd year students)

Some online materials for competitive programming are listed below:

HackerEarth Codemonk Tutorials

TopCoder Tutorials

Some online platforms for practice are:

CodeChef    |    Hackerrank    |    HackerEarth    |    Codeforces

Beyond competitive programming, one can also learn some development frameworks according to his/her interest including but not limited to:

• Web development (Javascript, AngularJS, etc for FrontEnd and Django, NodeJS, etc for Backend)
• Machine Learning
• Network Security

For Penultimates (3^rd year students)

This will be the internship and placement preparation year for undergraduate students. Here are some websites for preparation material for placements.

LeetCode    |    InterviewBit    |    GeeksForGeeks

Besides coding and development, one should also dive into some System Design concepts to land a job at good companies. Here are some links to learn System Design concepts:

System Design Primer    |    Gaurav Sen Youtube Videos

Some students also want to prepare for higher study exams like GATE, GRE, CAT, GMAT, etc. Since I have cracked GATE CSE 2019 with AIR 03, I can suggest some tips for its preparation. To know more about GATE visit this link.

My GATE Journey

Hello friends, I am Nipun Mittal, 4th-year UnderGrad in Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida and I have secured All India Rank 3 in GATE CSE 2019. In this post, I’ll share my experience of the journey of preparation and tips and guidance for the aspirants.

First of all, I want to thank one of my best friends, Nupur Garg, who motivated me to prepare for GATE without which I may not achieve this wonderful feat, my parents who no matter what supported me for anything and everything, my teachers for their guidance and my friends and colleagues for their confidence in me.

I have started preparing for GATE in the penultimate year of the college (February 2018). Since my understanding of the basic concepts of my engineering subjects was good and GATE syllabus is all about them only (with good depth), I have decided to prepare in such a way that my time should not be wasted on easy subjects, but to keep me on schedule of preparation I also don’t want to prepare on my own. My first choice was MadeEasy but since they don’t have e-coaching and I don’t want to join the classroom course as this would slow down my pace of preparation and might be irritating also. The second choice was Ravindra sir online coaching but since problems discussion might be difficult with him as I can’t meet him in person, so I dropped that idea too. So finally, I took the online coaching of Brainstorm Achiever and started my preparation. The teachers at the coaching were humble and know their subjects well. I also do competitive coding and I have secured 49 rank in ACM ICPC Kolkata-Kanpur Regionals 2017-18. I have not left coding during preparation which made my preparation pace slow (around 3-4 hours a day) but I was consistent. I have also done a two-month summer internship in Hackerrank, Bangalore and landed a PPO as a backup. I didn’t participate in the on-campus placement drive because the companies were not that good. Because of all this, my preparation completed in December after 11 months. I have only used coaching videos and some articles on GATE CSE, Gate Overflow and Gatevidyalay for tough topics. I have practiced coaching sheets and previous year GATE questions. The difficulty of the subjects varies from person to person but in general, the subjects which can be difficult and require more effort are COA, CN, and TOC.

In the last month, I took the online test series of MadeEasy and did almost every subject-wise and full-length tests. It helped me to improve my accuracy, time management and made me aware of some small yet important topics which I haven’t covered so far. I also bookmarked the difficult and important questions of the test series and revise them on the last day of preparation to make sure I do them correctly in the examination. I also become active on Facebook groups dedicated to GATE preparation to gain better insights from like-minded aspirants. It helped me a lot. My last month preparation was the major uplift in my confidence and knowledge.

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Now, for the other aspirants like me, I want to say that be consistent in your preparation because

Slow and steady wins the race.

– Robert Lloyd

GATE preparation is not difficult given that your basic concepts are clear. If they are not clear don’t worry you just have to go the extra mile to achieve your target and believe me it’ll be worth it. Sometimes during preparation, I felt like I might not able to complete my syllabus but instead of panicking I speedup my preparation as much as I could and leave rest to fate because some things are not in your hands and it is best to leave them on their own.

All the best for your exam and Happy Journey.

P. S: I have moved this post from my WordPress website.