Ten good things about playing hackerrank contests

June 23, 2018

Introduction

It is time for me to write down an eulogy about Hackerrank contest. I spent a lot of time to check in all source code for each hackerrank contest last week, and I just wondered how come I played so many contests through last two years.

It takes me hours to go over those algorithms, blogs. I could not believe that I did write so many algorithms, over 100 algorithms for over 25 contests.

Hackerrank contests

I used to play a lot of hours tennis sports. I know that people will ask me how many hours I have played. 500 hours or 1000 hours. I like to get those hours for Hackerrank contest.

I like to give thanks to Hackerrank and those sponsored companies. I never made it to any of those companies. I try to play for Canada, play for myself, and play for fun.

It is a new life style when I chose to play hackerrank contest one after another one. I could not remember I spent so many weekends to play contests.

Here are some facts:

1. 5 medals, including a gold medal, two silver medals, 2 bronze medals from March to June 2017.

2. A few calls from local software companies first time contacted me from July 2017 to Oct. 2017. 

3. April 2018 I got contact by a company, May I got a phone screen without code screen.
4. I play very well a lot of places. I think that I play Hackerrank, Quora.com, Blogger.com, Code review on stackexchange.com, mock interview platform, also social websites: twitter.com, instagram.com, facebook.com, google+.

Here are my thoughts:

1. I want to be an excellent algorithm and data structure teacher.
2. I want to write code in the weekends. Keep myself busy.
3. I try to bring some topics for my coding blog, contest is really great activity.
4. From April to June, I had more time to play contests since I also play a lot of sports, tennis. 

We got so many platforms to play, somehow I just demonstrated to people that every one can do such a good job if you can work hard continuously over years. I also need to remind myself to work hard, do not give up.

Best thing is to love writing software after those contest experience. I just could not believe that I enjoy so much to write software at work. I could not control to rewrite if I have time, since I have better idea to implement a solution.

10 good things about playing contests

1. No more phone call, chatting.
2. No more shopping around. I try to cut down to minimum.
3. No worry about weather. Stay at home office all the time.
4. Enhance the ability to do research, enjoy exploring new topic of algorithm and data structure.
5. Know more players in the world.
6. New way to meet people, those people loving the competitions.
7. Do not need money to play. Only need free time.
8. Enjoy long hours work, I documented each hour. Work on a check list.
9. Build strong interesting to write code
10. Learn to play with limited time, follow up with code review questions, experience learning through more than 12 months.