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> Top-level competitive programmers have libraries of functions and algorithms that they copy-paste from, and so the end result is more like a spelling bee than anything else.

I don't think you've kept up with or watched any "top-level" competitive programmer solve problems. Saying all competitive programmers do is copy-paste is like saying all programmers do is google.

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I think that if your job is to program quickly (which is the case for some subset of professional programmers), most of your job is to figure out what to Google, and then putting together your search results. That is roughly the same for competitive programming, at least for the times I have tried it and the people I have watched do it. About half the time is spent thinking about what to pull off the shelf, and the remaining half of the time is putting it inside your solution template (which you have pre-made to save time during the competition).

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