← Return to blog
This is the story of Nathan Wang, a high school senior from Cupertino, California. He is a 3x finalist at USA Computing Olympiad (USACO), 5x qualifier for the American Invitational Mathematical Examination (AIME), and a founder of Competitive Programing Initiative (CPI) & usaco.guide (two prominent organization / website providing comprehensive guide to competitive programming). I had the chance to interview him this week about his accomplishments, interests, and how he got to becoming one of the top problem solvers today. Extremely skilled in both algorithmic programming as well as in web development, he is indeed “The Coding Wizard” (a name he calls himself) and undoubtedly the best programmer I personally know. Go check out his website: https://thecodingwizard.me/
Bian Lee: How and when did you first get into programming and how did you develop your skills over time?
Nathan Wang: I started programming from a very young age -- around 8 years old. My dad taught me Lua, and I self-studied web development through some free Codecademy courses. I had a strong interest in programming and kept learning more about coding throughout my life, with a specialization in web development. I discovered competitive programming through my brother when I was in 7th grade; since then I've spent a considerable amount of time practicing competitive programming (USACO in particular) in addition to continuing to do web development on various projects I was interested in.
Bian: I think it's really cool that you are talented at both competitive / algorithmic programming, as well as web development which require different sets of knowledge and skills. What do you like about each, and do you think being good at one helps you become better at the other?
Nathan: For competitive programming, I like learning about cool algorithms / data structures and reading editorials to interesting problems. It's really fun thinking about those sorts of problems and trying to solve them. For web development, I like how versatile it is and how you can see what you create. You can do a lot of awesome things with web development, and the feedback from your code is immediate -- you make a change to your code and you can instantly see the UI change. This makes it highly enjoyable to create and refine websites. I don't necessarily know if being good at one would help you become better at the other. The skill sets seem quite distinct from each other. I guess both help develop general debugging and programming skills though.
Bian: Interesting. Now onto the topic of USACO. Describe what it was like to work your way up in the competition. Was there any division that took you a long time to advance?
Nathan: I did USACO much earlier, before the recent difficulty increases. I already had a strong programming background, and with a lot of luck I actually got promoted from Bronze to Gold in one contest, then Gold to Platinum in my second contest, without actually studying for USACO in specific. However, my actual skill level was really in the "basic Gold" range.
Bian: Once you made it to Platinum, what did it take to become a finalist?
Nathan: I took Gold and Platinum summer camp at Alphastar, read through some of Competitive Programming 3, and spent a year doing a bunch of old USACO problems (I did almost all Gold problems and ~75% of Platinum problems). This, combined with a lot of luck, helped me barely qualify to be a finalist in 2019.
Bian: I know you are also a 5 time qualifier for AIME. When and how did you get into competition math, and what did it take to qualify for AIME numerous times? Also, do you find any similarities between USACO and AIME questions and do you ever apply the same problem solving techniques?
Nathan: I started competitive math at a young age, and was introduced to it by my parents. I had math tutoring from a young age; this helped me get good enough to qualify for AIME. I didn't notice any similarities between USACO and AIME, though I heard from others that coming from a competitive math background helps with competitive programming (Although it's probably not worth doing competitive math in order to improve at competitive programming -- it's more time efficient to just practice competitive programming directly).
Bian: You are a founder of usaco.guide as well as Competitive Programming Initiative. What was your motivation behind building the two?
Nathan: For USACO.guide, I wanted to update the training pages for USACO, but the idea grew from there and we ended up building an entire learning platform that's now the USACO Guide. As for Competitive Programming Initiative, we wanted to expand competitive programming by increasing awareness to more students, and we also wanted to create a more equal playing field for USACO, where talent and effort was worth more than financial resources
Bian: On the development of usaco.guide website -- Did you start building the full stack app from scratch by yourself? How is the codebase managed now?
Nathan: I built the app from scratch (though I used a lot of libraries and frameworks to help me out). The codebase has two parts, the website and the actual content. The website hasn't changed much recently. The actual content is being worked on by a large team of content authors and content managers. Everything is managed by the parent organization, the Competitive Programming Initiative.
Bian: How did you grow the two over time? What did it take to grow the user base?
Nathan: It grew quite organically; we didn't have to do much advertisement. The USACO Guide got a lot of initial traffic from a CF [CodeForces] blog post, and then it was posted on the USACO.org training page, so its growth and traffic is largely self-sustaining now. Competitive Programming Initiative was harder to grow, but with the USACO Guide, Google searches, and various other outreach initiatives we gained decent traffic.
Bian: Besides math & computing, what are some of your other hobbies / interests?
Nathan: I like business (FBLA), policy (Model UN), speech & debate as well! I also really enjoy playing board games, and especially social deduction games like The Resistance.
Bian: What do you hope to pursue in the future, and what advice can you give to other younger students?
Nathan: I'm not really sure what I'm looking to do in the future, but I'm sure it will have something to do with code! I don't really have any good advice for younger students unfortunately, but maybe starting USACO as early as possible? I guess?
Bian: What music do you listen to?
Nathan: Twice! Which has anecdotally been proven to improve competitive programming contest performance.
Nathan is definitely off-the-charts brilliant when it comes to computing, as well as running his own initiative. Among so many student organizations I’ve seen, none has made as much impact as Competitive Programming Initiative and its numerous projects, including usaco.guide. It is extremely inspiring to see how a single driven individual can accomplish so much, from numerous successes in olympiads, and writing a whole codebase oneself to establish one of the biggest and widely used websites among students. It seems TheCodingWizard’s power through coding is truly unstoppable, not to mention his leadership ability that has also proven extremely effective in carrying the initiatives this far. I am personally deeply inspired by Nathan’s story and am excited to see what great things he should accomplish in the future. I want to thank Nathan once again for allowing me to conduct this interview and share his story.