I believe I am a good engineer, I have heard generally positive things about my professional work, have a college degree, etc.
I am however terrified of programming challenges (topcoder, spoj, interview-street, etc.) I have tried solving some problems there using Ruby (back when it was 1.8.x, too slow for these kind of problems) and given up. Maybe I should give it a shot with C. Any ideas how to start, considering these competitive coding websites are quite important when interviewing at certain companies?
I am however terrified of programming challenges (topcoder, spoj, interview-street, etc.) I have tried solving some problems there using Ruby (back when it was 1.8.x, too slow for these kind of problems) and given up. Maybe I should give it a shot with C. Any ideas how to start, considering these competitive coding websites are quite important when interviewing at certain companies?