Get High Rating in Competitive Coding with Black Box technique

First let’s understand what exactly is a “Black box". Wikipedia definition of Black Box testing : “Black-box testing is a method of software testing that examines the functionality of an application without peering into its internal structures or workings. This method of test can be applied virtually to every level of software testing: unit, integration, system and acceptance.”

This may have given you a rough idea about Black box testing. In CP, we use this technique to solve difficult coding problems by just copy pasting some codes which we don’t even know how it works, but what we do know is what kind of input that code (function) takes and what kind of output does it give. You may try to learn the inner workings of that code later in your journey of becoming a top coder but in the meanwhile it is completely fine to copy paste the code and make it do the magic for you. In this way it also helps you to gain confidence and gets you familiar with lots of difficult concepts which you initially never would have thought of learning.

Given below are some resources from where you can get those Black Box codes to help you solve those difficult problems that you always couldn’t solve. But do keep in mind that you need to go through those codes to understand what input it takes and what output it gives you, otherwise you won’t be able to use them.

Resources :-

• AtCoder library : https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/82400
• CP Algorithms : https://cp-algorithms.com/
• KACTL Algos : https://github.com/kth-competitive-programming/kactl
• Benq’s library : https://github.com/bqi343/USACO
• GalenColin’s library : https://github.com/galencolin/cp-templates