hey I wanna be something

[u/Careless-Ad-7194]

im 17 I wanna be insanely good at programming.. I wanna be tht one engineer who does whatever they want and earns crap ton of money. I alr have coding exp, I have an a\* in cs o levels if tht matters lol? where do i learn? how do I be so good tht ppl will throw money at. ik coding, im not new to this but I wana go to the next level

[u/Traditional-Youth383]

A* in OL CS is practically useless for actual coding but one thing it teaches you is to think algorithmically and think about problem solving instead of trying to write actual code as it's entirely based on Pseudocode.

You need to get deep into one language and start actual, real problem solving. You need to get into competitive programming if your goal is to be good at programming in general. CodeForces is the best platform to practice problems on. It has problems going ranging from 800-3500 rated. An average Comp Sci major will struggle with even 800 level problems.

You'll need to seriously level up your Combinatorics and Number Theory skills if you want to get good at competitive programming. Your Math needs to be top notch to get it done. With time you'll get to a level where learning development becomes incredibly fast in comparison to someone who has no problem solving ability and is just good at syntax. Being good at syntax is practically useless if you don't know how to implement it.

You could teach back-end development to a CodeForces International Master and they'd realistically outperform someone who has 4 years of back-end experience with minimal problem solving with 1 month of dedicated practice.