Let's talk about competitive programming

I like how the OP has clarified the question is from a sports perspective! These days I see so many people asking for it as an interview prep thing.

Competitive programming from an interview perspective can just be done in 30 days if not less. Anything ahead of that is pure sport. Don't expect it to take you ahead in life.

I'll go first,

1. I'm currently ~ 1800
2. I've always enjoyed anything that has a ranking system. I'll have to introspect more to understand why but for now competitive programming scratches that itch for me.
3. I'm sceptical about Google's claims about their model's efficacy. They claim their model AlphaGo2 is as good as an 1700 player on codeforces, but many of their submissions were criticized for being way too similar to the editorial solutions and hence showed signs of leakage. But if such a model does come up then the sport would die or move to heuristic problems like hash code and the whole interview system would go through a big paradigm shift.

1. Not current but career best in 1400s.

2. Stopped a few years ago. I felt it is too addictive and time consuming. I found better marginal utility doing other software engineering stuff - namely building interesting projects across tech stacks.

3. I guess similar to the impact Stockfish engine had on chess. People who are truly interested will continue playing. We'll see new formats come up (like 1 vs. 1 or 4 vs. 4 for eg:) where using AI models would be difficult due to greater scrutiny.