Here’s a list of best websites for competitive programming.
Digital representation of everything we know is occurring at a fast pace, and at this rate, coding will become an indispensable part of the school curriculum in a few years. The recent event of COVID-19 pushed us even more into the digital world, showing how vital coding will become in the near future. But coding for many people can be boring or tiresome.
So, it is necessary to give them an interesting platform to grow on and that can be done through many coding websites. It gives coding a competitive essence with more ways of learning. It is important that the learners should be able to take the assistance of the best available websites. For that, we have the best websites for competitive programming that are available on the internet that are given below.
List Of Best Websites For Competitive Programming
NOTE – It is to be noted that the sequence is totally out of personal preference. However, the learners can choose any one of the mentioned that meets their requirements.
1. LeetCode
LeetCode was founded in the heart of Silicon Valley in the year 2015; and just in two years, they crossed the milestone of 1 million users. Many successful coders and developers have enhanced their coding abilities from this website. LeetCode provides numerous challenges that can be answered online.
Although users can’t view others’ solutions, you can check how fast or accurately your code ran compared to other users. Apart from that, the website also deals more with the professional course, preparing the users for online coding interviews and exams.
2. TopCoder
Founded and still grossing since 2001, Topcoder has been crucial to many successful developers. The Topcoder community welcomes everyone – natives to foreigners, who can come and learn from it without any financial requirement or boundary. It has various sets of algorithms which helps the learner to go through different types of programs involving competitive quiz and coding challenges which by default gets tougher with each level the learner passes.
Several online exams also take place which is surprisingly competitive as people compete to get into the rankings by solving the challenges fast. Obviously, the ranking coders are the truly talented ones, who manage to win the weekly matches. Those who excel at the competition maintain a blog of their own where they write about different types of coding programs and algorithms. They also participate in the Topcoder Annual tournament, which is a competitive tournament. So, this can be one of the best websites for competitive programming.
3. Exercism
It is an online, open-source free coding platform that came into existence in the year 2013, and by 12 months it managed to grow up to 6000 users. It provides coding in 50 different programming languages with its challenges spanning more than three thousand. What separates it from other websites is its interactive method of teaching as it provides them with a mentor to work with. The course is also free of cost making learners come from the wide land of the internet and try the course.
4. Coderbyte
Coderbyte is a profound website founded in 2012. It is considered the best website for competitive programming by many as it helps the users to learn coding and programming with interesting tools. The users often find their skills more enhanced and the competitions more appealing to attend. The best feature of this website is its videos. The videos give a very in-depth explanation about how a learner should approach a particular coding.
Not only beginners but even professional programmers can take help from these videos which start from the basic problems. Just like the Topcoder website, its difficulty rises as the programmer advances through the challenges. It has one of the most simple but intuitive UX. Moreover, its feedback mechanism is praised a lot too.
With 10 different programming languages included and the feature of accessing answers from other programmers along with that of the official one, Coderbyte could have been the best website if it is free. The monthly subscription of Coderbyte is 35$. Apart from that, Coderbyte has unlimited potential.
5. Project Euler
Coding is not only about taking knowledge and tricks from outside and implementing them. It could foster the creativity and ideas of the users. Project Euler was founded in 2001, and since then; it has nurtured numerous numbers of coding minds. What it does is ask the users to make a small program to figure out a problem related to mathematics or science.
This starts from a novice level where simple equations are required to complex programming, and tougher mathematical values are needed to be extracted. Although it still has its downside that you cannot code on the website with an editor. So, you have to prepare the answer on your computing device and then post the answers.
6. HackerRank
Founded in 2009, HackerRank was the first of its kind to be accepted into Y-Combinator; and was the first-ever Indian company to be accepted. One thing that HackerRank has an edge over other coding websites is that it shelters several different domains from where the challenges are given. The domains vary from Algorithm, Mathematics, SQL, Functional programming to Artificial Intelligence. And that’s the reason why HackerRank is so hard.
It focuses on competitive programming challenges for both consumers and businesses, where developers compete by trying to program according to provided specifications. HackerRank provides the users with a variety of programming languages too. But it cannot get into higher preference because apart from the editorial, you can’t view the solutions that other coders have uploaded.
7. CodinGame
CodinGame was found in 2012, and as the name goes its internal design is more like a game where you are not only solving challenges in a repetitive and boring manner, but you will have to design codes for games that you will be able to play online. This evidently lets the user know where and what he must alter in his coding to make it correct.
This gaming methodology worked out well as numerous coders are inspired to solve it. Even though the website is made for fun learning. It still holds competitive aspects, to keep the users engaged.
8. Codewars
Founded in 2012 November, Codewars is an online coding and programming website that concentrates more on exercises and training. These discrete programming exercises help the user to get familiar with a wide variety of skills of different programming languages. Unlike few other websites, the user can directly answer the challenges online via the editor feature.
One can also access the discussions that are related to the challenges and able to view others’ reviews and answers.
9. SPOJ
SPOJ (Sphere Online Judge) was founded in 2004. It generated over 315,000 registered users and is still growing. SPOJ is a judicial system that provides users with over 20 thousand problems to solve. There are problem setters who set the problems for the casual tests, and sometimes they just take the questions from the previous exams.
You can get good feedback as you can submit your answers online via the online editor. But the downside is that there is no official solutions are released on the server. So usually, people feel reluctant to join.
10. CodeChef
CodeChef was started in 2009 as an educational initiative for the programming community by ‘Directi’, an Indian software products company. Today, CodeChef is one of the world’s largest and best websites for competitive programming platforms preferred by students and professional programmers alike.
This website provides the users with numerous challenges belonging to different domains depending on the skill set you have acquired. Apart from the yearly tournaments, they also conduct several monthly competitions giving an interesting coding environment.
Conclusion
Learning to code is no more a thing where you would face obstacles. You have the best websites for competitive programming where you can practice and sharpen your skills at their best. Now, learn to code and choose any site that you feel is more convenient for you. Your learning would not be a waste of time!
Treehouse is best for coding.
If your main focus is competitive coding then C++ is the most preferred language.
If you want to improve the competitive coding skills you have to be patient, participate in the regular contests, try data structures, and choose platforms for competitive programming.