Your Competition Is Terrifying

You: - fairly average software dev - claims not to be competitive, but secretly dreams of landing on the leaderboard at least once - uses a full IDE; wastes a minute right out the gate waiting for it to start - still parsing the problem statement while others are already submitting answers - actually uses a debugger when things aren't working Your competition: "Hackerman" - InfoSec major - sits at his PC on a near-lethal dose of Adderall waiting for the timer to hit 00:00 - has automated scripts for pulling the input and submitting solutions, and his own library of helper functions for every imaginable problem - knows your IP at all times "/m/bwftars" - research scientist at Intel - does puzzles for fun that are harder than any job you will ever have - so utterly bored with the problems that he creates increasingly ridiculous self-imposed restrictions to keep things interesting - solved last year exclusively in APL on the global leaderboard - personal homepage is HTML 2.0 compliant "wjhbr" - software dev from undisclosed Eastern-European country, making 200k/yr for a company you've never heard of - is in literally every coding competition - Twitch stream is just a Vim terminal and the sounds of a mechanical keyboard - types faster than you can read or think "Tharg" - Linux kernel hacker - specialization in compiler design - is golfing in some esoteric language nobody has ever heard of - can mentally transpile any code he sees to assembly - measures his solutions' performance in actual clock cycles "通用中文名" - overworked Chinese university student, double majoring in theoretical physics and chemical engineering - has been locked into various educational institutions since he was 3 years old - only time outside of school is for piano lessons - can literally only see the relevant parts of the problem statement - you will not understand his solutions without a PhD in discrete mathematics "Samir Nagheenanajar" - outsourced IT support technician - does puzzles because he has nothing better to do during his shift - forced to solve in Excel because he isn't allowed to install other software - can reveal the face of God using only VBA - rumored to possess the combined knowledge and power of all Indian educational Youtubers

A software developer is compared with a series of absurdly overqualified, hyper-competitive programming contest opponents, each represented by a different portrait or avatar. The joke is that even an average developer faces impossibly specialized rivals, from an Adderall-fueled hacker to a Chinese physics student and an Excel-bound IT technician who supposedly possesses the power of every Indian educational YouTuber. It is used as a reaction to intimidating competition or feeling hopelessly outmatched. EN: A software developer is compared with a series of absurdly overqualified, hyper-competitive programming contest opponents, each represented by a different portrait or avatar. The joke is that even an average developer faces impossibly specialized rivals, from an Adderall-fueled hacker to a Chinese physics student and an Excel-bound IT technician who supposedly possesses the power of every Indian educational YouTuber. It is used as a reaction to intimidating competition or feeling hopelessly outmatched.

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