Code champs

IIT Hyderabad students Adarsh Pugalia and Shalin Shah won Code Vita, the fourth Global Coding Challenge for students, organised by TCS, held in Hyderabad. To put their win into perspective, the duo beat stiff competition from 1,97,639 registrations across 3,708 colleges globally. They also walked away with a prize money of $10,000.

 “It’s great to lift the trophy, but to be honest; all the teams that made it into the top 15 could have outperformed each other on another day. I won’t say we were lucky as we had worked hard, but it was just our day,” says 21-year-old Adarsh, who is pursuing Science Engineering with a specialisation in CSE.  

The last phase of the competition was a test of patience, says his partner Shalin Shah. “For the first three hours, we had a big lead and thus it was easy. Suddenly, in the fifth hour, we realised another team had managed to solve as many questions as us and then the pressure began to mount on us. In the last hour, however, we solved one more question and it ended with a tie,” says the 20-year-old. Eventually, Adarsh and Shalin ended up winning because of the time gap between the two teams.

The duo didn’t really practise or try doing anything different just for the competition, says Adarsh. “I have been doing competitive ramming and solving algorithmic questions since my first year of college. I have taken part in different platforms and competitions earlier including Hacker Rank. So there was nothing special that I did to prepare myself,” he says.

Talking about their partnership, Shalin adds, “We practiced individually. We would turn to each other only if we had any doubts. Since I come from an electrical engineering background and have no formal education in coding and solving algorithmic problems, I found it a little tough to cope. But we worked it out.” He adds, “All’s well that ends well.”

While Adarsh will start working as a software development engineer soon, Shalin wants to complete his studies before deciding on his future course of action.  But for now, the duo wants to relish their win and get back to what they do best — coding.