How I founded Peer Programming Hub?

Hey all 👋

Hope you are enjoying reading through my blogs. So, here’s a blog on the most asked questions to me. Peer Programming Hub has completed 1 year today, so let’s see its journey.

What is Peer Programming Hub?

Competitive Coding community that conducts a free CP Camp for students. The camp is designed with a theme of STREAK👻, with 4 different levels — Sergeants, Knights, Captains, Commanders. Final survivors become the WarLords.

Only the students who are able to clear the selection camp can participate in the CP Camp.

To qualify each level, students have to solve X number of questions of specific difficulty rating Y(evaluated on the basis of their current Codeforces ratings) daily on Codeforces. Difficulty ratings increase with each level. Besides, there are additional perks for participating in live contests. All the reports are calculated using a software designed by me 😎.

The community has conducted 3 successful coding camps so far with 100% satisfaction rate 🥳

https://peer-programming-hub.web.app

How did the idea arise ?

It was the month February 2021, I had a livestream session with IIT Guwahati regarding Competitive Programming(CP). That’s when I realised that students are not very well aware of CP and are pursuing it just due to peer pressure.

I just planned to create a community wherein I could share relevant resources and clear students' doubts regarding CP. The only idea I had was to track daily problems solved by users using StopStalk.

Fun Fact
The CP Camp, the 4 levels, the Gamified approach, even the software was never planned.

I posted a message on LinkedIn regarding the Community on 21 Feb stating that the community starts on 1 March 2021 and surprisingly more than 100 students joined the group on day 1.

I was blown, as tracking more than 100 profiles every day manually was an impractical task. Still, I thought I’ll figure out some way.

Honestly, I forgot that February had 28 days, I thought I had 10 days to prepare. It was on 24 Feb when I was creating intro videos for the community, when I realised that I had only 5 days left. Surprise 🙈🙈

On 25 Feb, I was writing down everything on paper (breaking down each requirement into small steps to start developing my software). I wrote everything down, and went to bed. This is when the idea about the Gamified Camp came up. I thought it would be difficult for students to stay in a camp for 40 days with no motivation. Let’s add some thrill adding different levels to it.

Building CodeStreak (program to track community’s performance)

I just knew my requirements for the program, no idea about the technology required to create it.

I started reading the codebase of StopStalk, and how it was built. That’s how I learnt Web Scraping and implemented it and my program was ready(it all happened within 6–8 hours).

I cannot disclose more details, as it’s the root of the CP Camp.

Social Media Profiles

This was the most difficult task for me. I had myself never used Instagram (I am not a very social person). This was the first time I created an Instagram profile for Peer Programming Hub and started designing posters for it.

Same went for LinkedIn. But, here I had some experience, so it was easier.

Last part left was the website. I tried my best to design it, however it was incompatible with mobile phones. It was then when one of our community members(Ashutosh Yadav) volunteered and developed the whole website for the community.

Mentors

Initially I was managing everything for the community. It was during the third camp that I approached few Competitive Programmers on LinkedIn to mentor the students as volunteers.

Surprisingly, we were successful in getting mentors from organisations like Google, CodeNation, ShareChat, Swiggy, etc. Thanks to each one of them for contributing to the camp without any expectations in return.

Future Plans
I plan to create the first ever free coding camp for Indian Students. I wish to invite all amazing Competitive Programmers as mentors to contribute to the camp. Currently, we don’t have sponsors, I wish we get amazing partners and sponsors in future to help students more.

My advise to you if you are starting your own community

• Create Social Media channels before announcing the community.
• Have proper plans in written. It helps you understand the flow nicely and even gives you better ideas.
• Have a team that complements you. Support isn’t enough, team must complement you.

This is the most asked question, specially by people whom I approached for Mentoring.

Why I don’t charge students for the Camp?

• My vision is to create a free coding camp for Indian Students.
• Let’s talk in terms of Business (I love talking like an entrepreneur 😈). The problem statement of the camp is limited to a very small group. Let’s consider the best case scenario with 1 lakh students aspiring for Competitive Programming. If 10% students participate in the camp, and we charge 500 per student, it would hardly make 5 lakh rupees a year. This amount won’t do anything amazing to me, however a free coding camp for Indian Students is a bigger achievement.
• There are bigger problems in the world which I can serve and earn from 😉

I hope you enjoyed reading through the journey of Peer Programming Hub so far…

Hoping to make it bigger.