https://medium.com/@andreimargeloiu/how-to-prepare-for-competitive-programming-396d557e0c12

Later edit: I’ve qualified to the World Finals of Google HashCode 2017, the largest algorithmic competition organised by Google.

I started learning C++ from scratch during my first year of Highschool. I knew nothing about programming, algorithms or data structures. Seven months after I had written my first line of code, the Computing Olympiad was knocking at the door. And it was the perfect time to see if my learning style was worth 5 cents.