Why do I perform badly at the Informatics Olympiad?

[esolol]

I am a girl and I like computer science and I always do a variety of things, e.g., artificial intelligence, web development, but when it comes to competitive programming or informatics olympiad competitions, i just suck at them, i participated in them for like 2 years already and I never enter the final round... Should i quit programming?

 

[Hamiltonian]

Olympiads are (in)famous for being extremely challenging. If you fail, don't beat yourself up, simply try again and enjoy the process of preparing for it. Excelling at an Olympiad depends on way too many factors, out of which most are out of your control.

I prepared for the physics Olympiad for almost 2 years, I never made the national team to compete in the IPhO. But winning is never the point of any Olympiad, it's being introduced to topics and problems that a HS student would normally not be exposed to in their standard course studies.
Even though my Olympiad days are behind me now, I would do it all again. I met wonderful people along the way and most importantly I thoroughly enjoyed learning and solving elegant physics problems, that I other wise would have never encountered.

Never loose hope, there are tons of hackathon's that you can participate in beside Olympiads, you might win some and loose some but at the end of the day all that should matter is you enjoying the journey.

tl;dr, DON'T QUIT! because of not entering the final round. Continue to solve tough problems and writing beautiful code.

 

[sysprog]

I am a girl and I like computer science and I always do a variety of things, e.g., artificial intelligence, web development, but when it comes to competitive programming or informatics olympiad competitions, i just suck at them, i participated in them for like 2 years already and I never enter the final round... Should i quit programming?

Heck no, don't quit programming unless you decide that you really don't like programming $-$ the computer doesn't know whether you've won competitions, or have advanced degrees $-$ as a programmer, you already know this $-$

As a kid programmer in the '70s, I found out at age 12 that I wasn't as good as Prof. Donald Knuth is at programming $-$

(Prof. Don is the inventor of $\TeX$ and the author of The Art of Computer Programming $-$ please don't let that magnum opus discourage you $-$ it's very advanced, and please understand that Prof. Knuth wrote it to help computer scientists and programmers to understand things better and to write elegant code; not to convince people that it's too hard and that they should quit),​

but I didn't take that as discouragement $-$ I understood that I didn't necessarily have to be one of the world's top 100 best supernerds to make good contributions $-$ sometimes coding can feel like tedium and drudgery, but building systems and solving problems and writing good working code can be very rewarding, mentally and materially $-$ hang in there, girl $\dots$

A guy I was tutoring in programming in the early '80s said something that was very gratifying to me: he said he liked my 'don't just give up' attitude $-$ he had tried to compile a fairly simple PL/1 (that's an IBM mainframe programming language) program, and the compiler had issued dozens of error messages (the PL/I compiler is not terse and not shy about issuing multiple error messages) $-$ I guided him through reading and interpreting just the first few messages, and addressing the associated issues $-$ the next time he tried the compile there were a lot fewer messages, and after more working and thinking, soon enough there were no more compilation errors $-$ then it came time to make sure that the output was correct $-$ and so on.

For me at least, programming is more about competing against the problem; not so much about trying to be a better programmer than other programmers $-$ some of the best programmers I know are very collaborative $-$ they can code very well solo, but they can't write a million lines of working code in a year or two $-$ big projects require programmers of different levels of sophistication $-$ competitions can be excellent motivators and can help us to find exceptional talent and skill, but we need programmers at all levels of brilliance $-$

Most of the code that we're using to read and post on this forum was written by 'regular' programmers $-$ and the 'superstars' would not have many ways to present their superstar work without the huge amount of work done by regular programmers $-$ and I think that at all levels of ability, the discipline of programming helps to cultivate habits of clear thinking.

 

[jack action]

when it comes to competitive programming or informatics olympiad competitions, i just suck at them, i participated in them for like 2 years already and I never enter the final round... Should i quit programming?

You probably will cook, play sports, and do professional things during your entire life without entering competitions about them; and even less excelling at all these things. If you are satisfied with your work and even others appreciate it, why would you quit?

I am a girl

What's that got to do with anything?