Petr Mitrichev's Regular Contest Writings | Generated by AI
Question: Did Petr Mitrichev write weekly articles about competitive programming contests?
Answer:
Short answer: not exactly “every week,” but very regularly for a long period.
What’s true:
- The person you mean is Petr Mitrichev (often misspelled as Peter Mistrchev), a top competitive programmer and one of the founders of Codeforces.
- In the early years of Codeforces (around 2010–2014 especially), he frequently wrote editorials, blog posts, and commentary about Codeforces rounds.
- Because Codeforces held contests almost every week, it felt like he was writing weekly — and in practice, he often did.
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His writings usually included:
- Problem ideas and background
- Solution outlines and key insights
- Difficulty analysis
- Contest design philosophy
Important nuance:
- ❌ There was no official “weekly column” with a fixed schedule.
- ✅ But due to his deep involvement, many consecutive contests had posts written or overseen by him, which created the impression of weekly writing.
Why people remember it this way:
- Early Codeforces was much smaller.
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Petr personally handled a lot of:
- Problem setting
- Editorial writing
- Blog explanations
- Later, this workload was distributed among many authors, so his presence became less frequent.
In short:
Petr Mitrichev did not have a formal weekly series, but he wrote about CP contests so often—especially in early Codeforces—that many people remember it as “every week.”
If you want, I can:
- Point out classic Petr-written editorials worth studying
- Explain how his editorial style differs from modern CF editorials
- Recommend similar writers today who play a comparable role