Competitive Programming in Python: 128 Algorithms to Develop Your Coding Skills

Competitive programming rewards more than clever ideas: a solution also has to be chosen carefully and implemented efficiently. Competitive Programming in Python brings those demands together in a subject-organized collection of 128 algorithmic problems, pairing explanations with Python implementations that make the reasoning concrete.

128 problems, organized by subject

Christoph Dürr and Jill-Jênn Vie begin with programming-contest fundamentals, including complexity, essential data structures, and advice for approaching problems. The later chapters range across strings, sequences, arrays, intervals, graphs, shortest paths, matchings and flows, trees, sets, geometry, rectangles, numbers, matrices, and exhaustive search.

Understand the idea—and its implementation

Classic techniques such as Dijkstra’s shortest-path algorithm and Knuth–Morris–Pratt pattern matching appear alongside less familiar structures and methods, including Fenwick trees and dancing links. The book’s recurring framework connects a problem’s definition and complexity with its applications, algorithm, implementation, variants, and practice. That organization helps readers consider not just what an algorithm does, but when it fits and how to express it in working Python code.

For contest preparation and algorithm study

The authors draw on experience coaching, setting problems, and participating in programming competitions. The material is suited to readers strengthening their algorithmic foundations for contests or technical interviews, and can also serve as a basis for more advanced study of programming and algorithms.

A translated English edition

This edition was translated from the authors’ French-language work by Greg Gibbons and Danièle Gibbons. For readers who learn best by moving between a problem, its underlying idea, and an implementation, this is a focused way to build a broader working repertoire of algorithms in Python.