Competitions

In a programming competition, you are given a few hours to solve several problems. You have to write programs which solve the problems. You get points (partial credit or full credit) for every problem. The winner has the most points. Winners of coding competitions can win thousands of dollars in a single contest.

There are many sites which host online coding competitions. Here are two of the biggest contests.

USA Computing Olympiad

USA Computing Olympiad is for middle and high school students in the United States. There are 4 contests every year. The top 26 students get a chance to compete to be on the US Coding Team for International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).

Codeforces

Codeforces holds contests every week. It is for all ages in all countries. Your rank on Codeforces is pretty close to your rank in the world.