This is the most basic yet remains the most confusing question among all the students pursuing engineering till date.

Especially in Bachelors you get only 4 years to shape your life and you think how the hell can I waste these miniscule amount of time(according to you, but believe me it’s not!) on development works or vice-versa.

Yes you are true you can’t afford to take this question trivially and do a wrong decision only to regret it later,but hey let’s just settle with a fact:

CAN’T WE DO BOTH THE THINGS? I mean is there any big difference between them or are we just trying too hard to differentiate both?

Answer is yes,ofcourse you can do both with more efforts and yes I know you have heard from many about this stuff too. So instead of wasting your time on futile arguments on the topic of which is better I would give you a walkthrough to see yourself and judge and find out the solution all by yourself.

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So let’s begin:

Basically competitive is all about practising questions from different platforms like codeforces,codechef,SPOJ,etc. having a good grasp on Data Structures and algorithms while when we talk about a devoloper we picture a person developing websites,mobile apps ,handling bug fixes,handling scalability issues,etc.

So you see competitive programmer needs much more analytical skills,problem solving skills than a developer,right? Actually it’s just an one-sided judgement!. A developer too needs to have a good knowledge about how to improve scalability ,how to use different frameworks according to the demand and how to write neat and precise code(just like in competitive!) and have modularity in it.

OK buddy! Now I understood that I shouldn’t differentiate them.But it still didn’t answer my real concern about what should I really do: Should I do both or is it okay going with one of them?

Yes you are right!The answer to the questions are in the above meme.

See, to the latter question I would say yes it’s totally fine going on with one of them but as your working years will increase you will feel the need to learn the other one .

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Why?? Well here it goes…

• No doubt a developer can build good software without the skills of competitive programming but they can’t think analytically about ways to increase efficiency of the software ,how to improve time complexity how to make it less heavy and do all sorts of things according to demand amongst users.

• Similarly being just a competitive programmer means for years you have been solving problems on your own and it certainly lacks team work but team work is one of the most important thing while developing a real life software .You write code according to your logic and many a times it becomes unreadable for any other techie(I know that shit!,it frustrates) and this will turn out to be a big disadvantage for your team environment because in real life software development your team have to understand each other’s code and improve it and maintain it.

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Real world Scenario:

Think by yourself, big companies like Google,Microsoft,etc. they already have their software and have already techies to look for these website making and developing tasks. So now they need only better problem solver who improves their code base and decreases complexity.

On the other hand there are small companies or startups who have to build everything from scratch starting from making webapps to having their own devops. So they need a developer basically who can immediately do these things since they have more experience in this.

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OKAY!Enough talk ,let’s sum up now:

Well here I gave you the actual real world scenario so that you can know what’s the the future lies with what field. It’s your choice obviously but hey we have time in our hand right? and hunger for learning more ,so shouldn’t we make ourselves competent enough to do well in both fields !! and give a rest to the ever confusing question Competitive VS Development

Think about it!. & Code until you don’t rest!

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About the author

Raj Prakash,is an undergrad,pursuing Computer Science degree in BTech.He does competitive at day and development at night.Has respect for Javascript,loves hunting bugs of webapps and dwells on C++.He believes his taste in singing is better than anyone else! and loves to read mythological books.

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