I don't have direct experience yet since my son is only 0 years old, but I'm absolutely planning to introduce him to competitive programming when he's older.

I personally got hooked on AtCoder and Codeforces when I was in middle school. Back then, many contests started around 2 AM Japan time, which was tough, but it was incredibly fun. That experience is what led me to become a software engineer.

This hasn't changed even in the AI era. I now have Claude Code write most of my code, and I don't spend nearly as much time actually writing code as I used to. However, the underlying data structures and algorithms still excite me immensely. There's something deeply satisfying about understanding the fundamental concepts and problem-solving techniques that no AI tool can replace.

Competitive programming teaches you to think algorithmically and break down complex problems - skills that remain valuable whether you're writing code yourself or directing AI to do it for you.