This is the story of Pritom Kundu, a young programming genius, who consider programming as a simple walk in the park. According to him

“The immense pleasure that you get when you solve a difficult algorithmic problem is enough motivation on its own to move ahead.”

Pritom is a 23-year-old undergraduate student from Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology (Buet). He is out to conquer the global programming arena as his team from Buet recently became the Asia West champion in the ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) World Finals 2020, one of the most well-known competitions in the programming world.

Pritom has been also titled as an ‘international grandmaster’ due to his consistent brilliance in solving algorithmic problems in competitions organised by Codeforces – a globally renowned site for those who want to succeed as a programmer and gain some solid points from potential employers.

He said that in these competitive programming contests, an individual has to solve multiple algorithmic problems within a very short time. Pritom said:

“I was fortunate enough to cross 2,600 points, which made me an international grandmaster.”

He passed his SSC from St Gregory’s High School and became the ‘Champion of the Champions’ at the National Math Olympiad when he was only a high school student.

“After becoming a national champion, I always regretted not participating in international Olympiads. But after getting admitted to Buet, I practised coding seriously and started participating in national programming contests relentlessly.”

For beginners, Pritom suggests programming books by Tamim Shahriar Subin. As a CSE student, he got an appropriate environment to groom himself and also had a supportive community.

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Pritom first started learning to program for solving Project Euler problems, which are focused on math. A coding knowledge was needed so he learned basic C++ from an online tutorial.

When people start to acquire a skill, rookie mistakes are common. According to Pritom, there are two types of mistakes that people widely make in programming.

“One of the most common mistakes people make is focusing too much on the quantity of solving problems, instead of focusing on the quality of the problem. The other one is procrastinating and not being consistent.”

For now, the young programmer is still exploring different opportunities and enjoying what he is good at.