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Competitive Programming

ICPC World Finals: My Journey to Dhaka

From Ethiopian Collegiate Programming Contest gold medalist to representing at the world stage. The preparation strategy, challenges faced, and lessons learned from competing globally.

January 4, 202615 min read

The Beginning

My competitive programming journey started in 2016 during my second year at Adama Science and Technology University. What began as curiosity about algorithms became an obsession that would define my career.

The Road to ETCPC Gold

The Ethiopian Collegiate Programming Contest (ETCPC) was our first major milestone. Our team spent months preparing:

Training Regimen

  • 4-6 hours of practice daily
  • Virtual contests every weekend
  • Topic-focused weeks (graph theory, dynamic programming, etc.)
  • Team strategy sessions

    • The Contest

    November 2020 - we entered the contest hall nervous but prepared. Five hours of intense problem-solving later, we emerged as gold medalists and the first-place team.

    Preparing for World Finals

    Qualifying for the ICPC World Finals was surreal. But qualifying and competing are different challenges.

    What Changed

  • Increased practice to 8+ hours daily
  • Focused on problems from past World Finals
  • Practiced under time pressure
  • Improved team communication

    • Resources We Used

  • Codeforces (2000+ rating problems)
  • Competitive Programming 3 book
  • Past ICPC problem archives
  • TopCoder tutorials

    • Dhaka 2021

    The World Finals in Dhaka was unlike anything we'd experienced:

    The Environment

  • 130+ teams from around the world
  • Problems designed by world-class setters
  • 5 hours that felt like 5 minutes

    • Our Performance

    We didn't win, but we competed. We solved problems alongside teams from MIT, Stanford, and Tsinghua. That alone was a victory.

    What I Learned

  • **Consistency beats intensity** - Daily practice compounds
  • **Team dynamics matter** - Technical skill isn't everything
  • **Embrace difficulty** - Hard problems make you stronger
  • **Enjoy the journey** - The destination is just one moment

    • Impact on My Career

    ICPC shaped how I approach software engineering:

  • Breaking complex problems into smaller parts
  • Optimizing for efficiency from the start
  • Writing clean, correct code under pressure
  • Never giving up on a challenging problem

    • The skills from competitive programming transfer directly to building production systems. Every day, I use the problem-solving mindset developed through years of competitive programming.