3 Best Languages for Competitive Programming

To start with competitive programming, the first thing you will need is a programming language. As there are a lot of programming languages available, it is quite difficult to choose one as a beginner.

Although competitive programming depends on your problem-solving skills, you have to write code faster and efficiently which you cannot do in all languages. So you need to choose a language in which writing code is easier and faster.

All languages have their pros and cons. To choose a language we need to compare its verbosity i.e. does it require too many words or typing, libraries, and packages available for that language, the speed of execution, etc.

Writing code in a particular language depends on your understanding of that language, but if the verbosity of that language is very high, then it will always take more time to write code in that language compared to a less verbosity language, no matter what your typing speed is.

Competitive Programming is all about solving a problem in the fastest time with minimum complexity. That’s why it is recommended to choose a better language. The following are the 3 best languages that you can choose and start with competitive programming.

C++ is the most recommended programming language for competitive programming. More than 50% of competitive programmers in the world prefer to use C++ over any other language.

C++ is famous as it is the fastest language i.e. its execution time is minimum, it has a good level of verbosity and for its STL (Standard Template Library), the collection of C++ templates.

The STL is a library that contains a lot of pre-implemented data structures, classes, containers, and algorithms which ensures speed during a contest.

C++ also supports the concept of OOPs (Object Oriented Programming). All these things make coding easier and faster.

Java is another popular language for competitive programming. It supports a good set of libraries like Big Integer which helps a lot in handling very large numbers where C++ falls behind.

Just like STL in C++, its libraries also contain a lot of predefined functions and containers for data structures (not at par with STL but good enough) that come in handy during the contest.

It has a great exception handling, because of that you can easily understand where and what the error is and debug that in less time as compared to C++ in which finding out the exact cause of the error can sometimes become difficult.

Other than that, the area where Java lacks behind is verbosity. A lot of typing is required even for a simple program like Hello World.

Nowadays Python is getting popular because of its easier-to-write syntax with very low verbosity and support of lots of great libraries and packages which have all the basic functions implemented and optimized.

So, you don’t have to write basic functions for every problem that helps in reducing the time of solving a problem. But as python is an interpreted language, it is very slow as compared to compiled languages like C++, Java, etc due to which the chances of getting a TLE (Time Limit Exceeded) increases.

So, if you are getting a TLE for a code in python, it has chances for the same code to get accepted in C++ which is a big downside for python as you have to write more efficient code.

There are several programming languages that you can choose for competitive programming. But no language is absolutely perfect, all have their pros and cons.

In competitive programming, you should focus more on problem-solving and have good knowledge of data structures and algorithms. If you don’t know how to approach a particular problem, then no programming language can help you.

A language just helps in writing code easily and in less time. So choose a language that you can understand easily but also focus on logic building and problem-solving abilities.

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