Bangla Tech Talk

002 - Competitive Programming, Software Engineering and Higher Education in Germany - Anindya Sundar Paul (MSc Student, Technical University of Munich)

Aug 16 '20

Anindya Sundar Paul is currently pursuing MSc in Informatics at the Technical University of Munich. His research interests include, but are not limited to Deep Learning, Computer Vision, and Artificial Intelligence. Before this, he completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Dhaka and joined digital payment platform iPay Systems Ltd as a software engineer. Andindya is also a passionate problem solver and a casual blogger. He gave up competitive programming in his second year of college due to his indomitable interest in various subjects of computer science but did not give up the practice of regular problem-solving. He sometimes writes about his education and experience in his blog.

In this episode, we talked about his competitive programming and problem-solving career, the difference between competitive programming and problem solving, the importance of regular problem solving for computer science students, his blogging, higher education in Germany, and life in Germany in general. We also talked about the differences and similarities between computer science studies in Bangladesh and Germany and the necessity (or uselessness) to learn German to pursue higher education in Germany. An outline with time is given below to help navigate this two-hour conversation.

OUTLINE

04:42 - Why study CSE

08:10 - Competitive programming

14:56 - The Difference Between Competitive Programming and Problem Solving

18:02 - The importance of regular problem solving for computer science students

25:26 - How the habit of tidying up everything started

30:59 - How does Anindya decide what to write

45:18 - How the practice of problem-solving came in handy in professional life

47:33 - How university life education came in handy in professional life

53:30 - Design pattern

59:40 - How to learn something without understanding the use case (Being comfortable with uncomfortable)

01:01:09 - Why internships are important