So, I had this phase, you know? Seeing all these folks hammering out code, solving problems like lightning. The competitive programming scene, the online judge stuff. For a while there, I really thought, “Okay, I need to be like that. Need to get faster, sharper.” It seemed like the benchmark, the way to prove you were any good.
I decided to dive in. Spent a weekend setting things up. Got the tools they all talk about, picked out some problems from those challenge sites. Made myself a cup of coffee, sat down, ready to grind. First few problems, okay, kinda standard stuff. But then it got… weird. Not the difficulty, exactly, but the point.
Everything felt like chasing tricks. Little “gotchas” and specific algorithmic patterns that you either knew or you didn’t. Speed was everything. Get the green checkmark, move on. My brain just kept getting stuck. I wasn’t thinking about the cleverest one-liner or the fastest possible loop. I was thinking, “Okay, but what if the input was formatted slightly differently? How would this scale? Is this even readable for someone else?” My mind wandered off to building robust things, not just passing tests.
Realizing the Disconnect
It felt like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. I’d spend an hour on a problem, not because I couldn’t solve it, but because I was overthinking the wrong things for that context. I was thinking about maintainability, about integration, about real-world jank. And the clock just kept ticking. It was frustrating as hell.
I remembered this one guy I worked with ages ago. Brilliant fella. Could whiteboard complex algorithms in his sleep. If you gave him a puzzle, he’d solve it faster than anyone. But his actual production code? Man, oh man. It was write-only. Nobody could touch it without breaking five other things. He was pure “OJ” brain, optimized for the puzzle, not the long game.
That’s when it clicked. I’m not OJ. And maybe that’s perfectly fine. My way of working, my way of thinking, it’s different. I like digging into the messy parts, figuring out how systems fit together, building something that works reliably day in and day out. It’s slower, yeah. Less flashy. Doesn’t win you any speed contests.
Here’s what I tend to focus on:
- How does this piece fit into the bigger picture?
- Who has to maintain this after me?
- What are the non-obvious failure points?
- Is it understandable?
Those aren’t usually the priorities when you’re trying to solve problem X on platform Y in under 15 minutes. And that’s okay. It took me a bit to really internalize that, to stop feeling like I should be that other kind of coder. But nah. My lane is different. It’s about building, iterating, sometimes failing, and making things work in the messy real world. Not just passing an online judge. So yeah. I’m definitely not OJ. And I’m good with that now.
