Meet Pritom Kundu, the Bangladeshi programming genius out to conquer the coding arena – The Business Standard
Programming is not everyone’s cup of tea, and often we assume it is an unconquerable battle for ordinary people.
Nonetheless for Pritom Kundu, a young programming genius, it has been like a simple walk in the park.
He said, “The immense pleasure that you get when you solve a difficult algorithmic problem is enough motivation on its own to move ahead.”
Pritom is a 23-year-old undergraduate student from Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology (Buet).
He is out to conquer the global programming arena as his team from Buet recently became the Asia West champion in the ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) World Finals 2020, one of the most prestigious competitions in the programming world.
His team also secured second place in Asia West Super Regional.
Besides this achievement, Pritom has been titled an ‘international grandmaster’ due to his consistent brilliance in solving algorithmic problems in competitions organised by Codeforces.
He is the second person from Bangladesh to achieve this title.
Codeforces is a globally renowned site and for those who want to succeed as a programmer and gain some solid points from potential employers, developing an impressive profile on it is a must.
He said that in these competitive programming contests, an individual has to solve multiple algorithmic problems within a very short time.
The contestant is rewarded with points and when someone reaches 2,400 points, s/he becomes a grandmaster.
“I was fortunate enough to cross 2,600 points, which made me an international grandmaster,” Pritom said.
He passed his SSC from St Gregory’s High School and became the ‘Champion of the Champions’ at the National Math Olympiad when he was only a high school student.
His knack for mathematics eventually helped him to excel in programming.
“After becoming a national champion, I always regretted not participating in international Olympiads,” he said, adding “But after getting admitted to Buet, I practised coding seriously and started participating in national programming contests relentlessly.”
His first official team contest was the ICPC 2017 Dhaka Regional Preliminaries.
“For a career in programming, fundamentally being good at math is not a requirement, neither is being a CSE student,” he opined, adding, “It does help, but you can also develop through consistently practising and reading books related to programming.”
For beginners, Pritom suggests programming books by Tamim …….
