# codeclub: a meetup idea for doing competitive coding together

i often wonder what sort of meetup i'd like to attend to have some sort of social life outside family and work. like what sort of hobby do i have where i could break through my introversion and actually talk to people?

after a lot of deliberation, i think there's only one club that i can imagine: a competitive programming club.

i imagine it this way:

• there's a weekly event, always at the same time.
• the participants come to the agreed meeting point (a rented meeting room) with their laptops.
• ideally there will be a real competition happening at that time (e.g. codeforces, leetcode), or we can just redo past events, or the organizer just picks a handful of problems that people need to code from scratch.
• we compete against each other in real time.
• after the event we discuss approaches, help each other finish coding the solutions or find bugs, compare (or even review) solutions.

here i would have a reason to talk! e.g. if someone doesn't know how to solve a problem but i do, then i could try explaining it -- i would be talking! or i could help find bugs. i love debugging. or i could even feel somewhat useful to someone else's learning efforts through the review part.

the latter bit could be especially helpful if junior people would come along these events for the fun. that could be achieved by advertising this event in high schools or in nearby universities.

and in general i quite enjoy coding up the puzzles from these competitiions. but doing it alone can be a bit boring. i have been to many similar competition events when i was in high school and university and i generally liked them. so such a meetup would be a good match for me.

of course logistics could be hard: one would need to rent a meeting room for this. although if it's popular among university folks, maybe the university can offer the room for this.

i'd probably be organizing this already if meetup.com and renting rooms weren't so much of a hassle (meaning me being cheapskate about the costs). but i'll keep this in my mind just in case if i ever get enough bravery for this.

edit: see @/coderate for another idea what to do in a code club.

published on 2022-06-19, last modified on 2022-09-03

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