Where is the roadmap?

TLDR: There is no roadmap!

I've seen over hundreds of videos on Youtube suggesting different kinds of roadmaps to follow in order to get started with competitive programming. With the evolution of Youtube over time, people took over the education platforms and created channels to guide students providing these roadmaps. Granted that we should evolve with time and should advance the tactics we follow while preparing for DSA and stuff. But we miss a major point here. How did people before this tutorial boom did all the DSA? From the books right? And they have managed to over-perform quite well, then why don't everyone else today follow the same strategy?

There's one major difference between them and us. We are preparing after the covid pandemic, and they prepared before it all changed.

What has changed?

So, deep down we all know that Youtube has been the lifeline for all of us passing exams and learning from tutorials, but what we don't realize is that Youtube has been spoonfeeding us doing so. And this causes a major lack of practice and curiosity while exploring and learning things on the web. Because everything is just available! So what is the right way to start?

The road less taken

I'm no one to decide what the right way is. But what I did was, I just started doing it as soon as I got some free time from the academics. I saw hundreds of tutorials on roadmaps and strategies, none of them were useful. The only way to get better at it is to start. And it has been over 4 months since I've started participating in contests, and there's no lacking behind ever since.

Future plans

Nobody knows what the future plans are, not even me. I'll continue doing this for as long as it interests me, and then would probably start contributing to open source again. (It had been a long time y'all)