Introduction

To become a competitive programmer, one must first learn a programming language.

In my personal experience, I started learning Java as my first programming language because of its simple to understand and almost universal syntax (which helps down the road) and user friendly environment (errors, warnings, errors, etc.)

• A great resource to learn Java would be either GeeksForGeeks or TutorialsPoint
• Some of the most well-known and user friendly IDEs where you can write code and compile on are IntelliJ and Eclipse

If you feel that you are strong with Java, you may want to learn C or C++. Many competitive programmers around the world use C++ because of its large library of data structures and built-in features. Additionally, C++ is one of the fastest programming languages so many prefer it over the possibly long wait times of Java, Python, or any other programming language.

For learning C++, you can use the same links as the ones for Java (GeeksForGeeks/TutorialsPoint) but for IDEs you can use CLion, CodeBlocks, Sublime Text, etc... Many of which have their own pros and cons. Personally, I use Sublime Text as it is very lightweight and compiles quickly.

That is it for the introduction! I hope you master the language of your choice well and can continue to motivate yourself in your goal to becoming a great competitive programmer!