How is the Blue Bridge Cup National Software Competition?

I think it's pretty good, at least it provides a great platform for students from many ordinary colleges. When it comes to programming competitions, the first thing everyone thinks of is ACM, but is ACM really suitable for everyone? Setting aside personal ability for a moment, just look at the school atmosphere—algorithm-related stuff is often not valued in non-211 universities. For the sake of employment rates, schools prefer to invest energy in teaching you things like Web, Android, and iOS that make it easier to find a job, rather than supporting students in spending a lot of time on ACM, a competition with an extremely low return on investment. Moreover, ACM is a team competition that requires coordination among multiple people. In an ordinary college, how many like-minded friends can you find who are willing to grind algorithm problems together every day? Do you think you're finding teammates for a ranked game? Now look at the Blue Bridge Cup—on Zhihu, you can easily find a bunch of people from top 10 universities who haven't heard of it, which is normal, and their criticism of the competition's level after understanding it is understandable. But this competition isn't aimed at the top of the pyramid anyway; its difficulty is lower than ACM, and it even has a group for vocational college students. It's practically a blessing for low-level algorithm enthusiasts like us. Compared to going to ACM and getting a bronze medal, why not win an award at the Blue Bridge Cup? Besides, it has the backing of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, schools support it, you can earn extra credits, and it also helps improve your skills. Many schools even reimburse the registration fee and travel expenses, so why not? Some people say that if you want to train, you can also train at ACM, and that's true. Some bronze-level players can learn a lot by going up against king-level players, but everyone's learning ability is different, which is probably why many people remain noobs after watching countless tutorial videos.