Making USACO Silver in about 4 weeks

#1

Hi,

Is it likely possible for me to start learning coding syntax now and getting silver in march? I did like 2 months of sparse practice last year but didn’t have time, but I can commit at least an hour or 2 per day this year. Essentially my question is, will about 60 hours or learning suffice for silver without much prior experience?

I do a lot of competition math, so I have experience in problem solving.

Thanks!

#2

You need more than that. The math may help somewhat, but you’d probably need 2-3 hrs on weekdays and dedicate many more hrs on weekends.

#3

So would you say 100 hours is enough?

#4

There’s no “enough”:

The more the merrier.
- a gazillion people

#5

Alright then. I’ll just try my best for the next few weeks, and if I don’t make it this year then oh well. I’m just too busy in the competition season so I never get a chance to really do coding.

#6

Hi,

I am having an issue in vs community regarding not being able to see the line numbers, any idea why this is?

Thanks!
Screenshot 2024-02-26 214535

#7

also I don’t recommend using visual studio for cp, because it defaults to MSVC compiler so you can’t use <bits/stdc++.h> or declare a static array with user-defined sizes

#8

What would you recommend? Multiple sources I found has vs listed as the top choice. Thanks.

#9

Enabled it, still does not show.

Screenshot 2024-02-28 180803
Screenshot 2024-02-28 1808031045×436 33.7 KB

#10

Got it now. What would you recommend instead of vs?

#11

https://ide.usaco.guide
It’s good for competiive programming.

Visual studio is designed for big projects.

#12

Thank you.

#13

sublime text

#14

Python

  • Pycharm
  • Vscode
  • Sublime Text

Java

  • Eclipse
  • InteliJ

C/C++

  • CLion
  • VSCode
  • Geany

Plugins:

  • AutoCP (for Jetbrains)
  • CPH (for VSCode)
    (I am honestly not sure if any of these plugins violates USACO rules, can someone pls check?)
#15

As far as I know if the plugins dont either auto submit or have pre-written code, it should be fine.

#16

BlueJ for Java and Code::Blocks for C/C++ too

#17

Also, IMO Visual Studio Code > Visual Studio (VSCode has a blue logo, VS has a purple one)

#18

for java intellJ is kinda heavy, so i would look away from it for cp, saem with CLion

#19

i would honestly go with a text editor for cp when using c++, code blocks is a very heavy editor