What is this meme about? “Competition”, “Leaderboard”, “Waiting for the timer to hit 0:00”? I am so confused.
Competitive programming.
Usually multiple algorithmic problems that are released to public at the same time and the fastest people to submit a correct solution get more points.
A fun one I still like to participate in is advent of code, which is a yearly christmas themed one with two problems released a day during advent.
If you want to seriously compete in competitive programming, you need to learn and memorize different problem types and the solutions to those. A bit like you start learning patterns in chess.
For practicing, the CSES Problem Set is a gold mine for practice problems. Theres also a list of competitive programming books on the site.
That sounds exhausting. Maybe I am showing my age, but after 15 years as a software developer (now DevOps engineer) I feel absolutely no desire to spend my free time competing against others. Maybe I would’ve felt different about this back in the days.
That being said, this meme still applies to regular software developers. I know plenty of people who match each of the shown stereotypes.
It’s about coding competitions, and without me being directly involved in the scene (the closest I get to it are silly competitions regarding indy-games or decompiling old games or whatever) I did make personal acquaintance with every of those stereotypes, and it’s so true.
