Email the Author
You can use this page to email Zachi Baharav and Daniel Zingaro about Start Competitive Programming!: Ace the USACO Bronze Competition.
About the Book
2024 update! + new pricing for teams (please get in touch!)
OK, so you want to do some competitive programming.
Maybe you've heard that competitive programming is great interview prep for the coding interview.
Or that it can help you learn to be a better programmer.
Or that it can help you learn algorithms and problem-solving to supercharge your code.
Or that competitive programming is fun.
All true! (Well, we hope it's fun :-) )
If you want to get started with competitive programming, look no further. Inside, you'll find:
-Expert advice from the authors. Dr. Baharav (that's Coach B in the book :-) ) is a competitive programming coach. Dr. Zingaro is the author of several bestselling algorithms, Python, problem-solving, and competitive programming books and a professional editor.
-Advice for how to categorize a problem before trying to solve it. Why categorize? Because then you know what kind of problem it is and what solution techniques to try! Modelling problems, search problems, optimization problems, geometry problems (don't run away... NO PROOFS, we promise!), string problems, ad hoc problems -- we've got them.
-Communication between a coach and their team. Like what a real coach would do! We're not just gonna jump to the final answer and call it a day. That would just be confusing. We need to explore and learn first!
-C++ code for all problems in the book.
-Curated, categorized selections of practice problems, with hints and full C++ code. Python code also provided!
Stop spending time figuring out what to learn next, getting confused by cryptic code, or circling around many different websites. Our no-nonsense guide shows you how to navigate, from "never tried competitive programming before" all the way to "BOOM, passed Bronze!"
Wanna participate in Advent of Code? Codeforces? Leetcode? Or want to prepare for a future coding interview? You can! We focus on USA Computing Olympiad (USACO) Bronze level for this book, but you can apply what you learn to whatever competitive programming or interview prep you'd like to do.
About the Authors
Dr. Zachi Baharav holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.
After more than 20 years in the hi-tech industry and academia, I retired to dedicate my time to the next generation. I am now coaching high school students in Math and Computer Science.
Dr. Daniel Zingaro is an associate teaching professor of computer science and award-winning teacher at the University of Toronto. His main area of research is computer science education, where he studies how students learn computer science material.
He may have a book obsession. He has written
Learn AI-assisted Python Programming with GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT (with Leo Porter, Manning, 2024). Learn programming in the generative AI era!
Algorithmic Thinking 2/e (No Starch Press, 2024). Learn hash tables, recursion, dynamic programming, trees, graphs, and all kinds of other awesome algorithms and data structures stuff... competitive programming examples!
Learn to Code by Solving Problems (No Starch Press, 2021). Learn programming from scratch while solving competitive programming puzzles. Class tested and refined with hundreds of real students.