On Monday, May 16, 2016 at 3:22:38 AM UTC+2, [email protected] wrote:
> I've been programming in Java. Does it make sense to switch to C for integer 
> or character-related problems?

C? No. C++? Possibly.

C++ is generally less verbose than Java, which is nice when you need to crank 
out a solution in as little time as possible. C++ also has some useful 
algorithms and data structures that might not be readily available in the Java 
standard library (e.g. std::next_permutation, lower_bound on sets/maps, etc.). 
Finally, C++ programs tend to be a bit more efficient, allowing you to get away 
with somewhat less efficient solutions than would be possible in other 
languages.

The reason I wouldn't recommend C is that it lacks many high-level data 
structures which are available in Java, C++, Python, and so on. For all 
practical purposes, C++ is a superset of C anyway, so even if you don't use the 
full language or standard library, C++ is strictly more feature-rich.

That being said, the Google Code Jam is usually pretty good at avoiding 
problems that are easy to solve in one language but hard in another, so it 
shouldn't matter too much which language you decide to use, especially if your 
default is Java, which is a pretty decent all-round language. If you already 
know Java well, I would suggest you focus on your problem solving ability 
rather than learning a new language.

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