Solving programming problems or contributing code?

Posted by nischayn22 on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by nischayn22
Published on 2012-06-13T06:45:11Z Indexed on 2012/06/13 10:47 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 265

Filed under:

learning

|

self-improvement

|

Students

What are the best skills to develop for a college graduate?? Should one spend hours/days trying to solve problems on codechef or topcoder or contribute code to open source organizations?

My personal experience says solving problems teaches you how to make optimal code and learn new programming techniques (which someone else has researched and made available) to solve problems, whereas contributing to open source teaches you how to organize code (so others can work on it), use coding conventions and make "real" use of what you have learnt so far, blah blah!!

Also another thing to note is that many companies are hiring today based on one's problem solving skills (Is this something I should worry about?)

P.S. I have done little of online problem solving and little of code contribution (via GSoC), but left confused what I should continue doing (as doing both simultaneously isn't easy).

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about learning

Machine learning challenge: diagnosing program in java/groovy (datamining, machine learning)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi All! I'm planning to develop program in Java which will provide diagnosis. The data set is divided into two parts one for training and the other for testing. My program should learn to classify from the training data (BTW which contain answer for 30 questions each in new column, each record in… >>> More
what's a good language for learning machine learning?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I've been thrust into a situation where I need to know something about Machine Learning. Is there a language or perhaps a reasonable tutorial that breaks this subject matter in gently? I'm not a math guy, so it's got to start from a pretty basic level. >>> More
Learning WPF and MVVM - best approach for learning from scratch

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, I've got about three years c# experience. I'd like to learn some WPF and the MVVM pattern. There are a lot of links to articles on this site but I'm getting a little overwhelmed. Would a sensible approach for a begginer to be forget mvvm for a while and just quickly learn a bit a of WPF, then… >>> More
What are the advantages of Ceylon over Java?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Looking for the recent and powerful upcoming programming languages over net, I came across Ceylon. I dropped in at ceylon-lang.org and it says: Ceylon is deeply influenced by Java. You see, we're fans of Java, but we know its limitations inside out. Ceylon keeps the best bits of Java but improves… >>> More
understanding evaluation function

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I am developing a chess program. And have made use of an alpha beta algorithm and a static evaluation function. I have successfully implemented both but I want to improve the evaluation function by automatically tuning the weights assigned to its features. At this point am totally confused about the… >>> More

Related posts about self-improvement

A toolset for self improvement and learning [closed]

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Possible Duplicate: I’m having trouble learning I've been working as an IT consultant for 1½ years and I am very passionate about programming. Before that I studied MSc Software Engineering and had both a part time job as a developer for a big telecom company. During that time I also took… >>> More
Time management and self improvement

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Hi, I hope I can open a discussion on this topic as this is not a specific problem. It's a topic I hope to get some ideas on how people in similar situation as mine manage their time. OK, I'm a single developer on a software project for the last 6-8 months. The project I'm working on uses several… >>> More
Time management and self improvement

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I hope I can open a discussion on this topic as this is not a specific problem. It's a topic I hope to get some ideas on how people in similar situation as mine manage their time. OK, I'm a single developer on a software project for the last 6-8 months. The project I'm working on uses several technologies… >>> More
Software development books are useful, but when to find the time to read them?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I have 5 books in my "read-wish-list". When do I read them? I mean I could force myself to use 1 hour during working hours, but this will last for 2 days then someone will ask me to do more "high priority things". One option can be reading at night, but also this has limits, even because I prefer… >>> More
When returning from a period of not programming, do you find you've improved?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
It seems as though whenever I take an extended break from programming—whether to pursue other interests or simply because I fall out of the habit for a while—I invariably find that when I return to a project and set to coding, I come with an abundance of new ideas, novel approaches, and… >>> More