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There are probably many different ways to create your own typeface.I can share with you my 9-year learning experience in search for how to make the perfect handwriting font.It all began in 2007, when I had started an internship in the type department of FontShop International in Berlin. There, I learned about font technology, but didn’t yet know much about type design. That didn’t stop me from making my own handwriting font called Comic Jens. As you can tell by the name, it is a spoof on Comic Sans. I drew the letters with my mouse, just like Vincent Connare did with Comic Sans MS, using the brush tool in FontLab Studio 5. I didn’t worry about applying optical corrections and left everything as the brush tool produced it, doing only minimal cleanup of the outlines. I finished my work in 2008 and released the font for free. It was featured as an alternative to Comic Sans by some blogs and magazines and enjoyed moderate success. It was downloaded by more than 4000 people through the end of 2009.Now that I have more experience in type design, looking at the clumsy forms of the typeface makes me cringe. I can hardly stand to look at it anymore.But already back in 2009 I hatched the plan to rework the font completely and expand it into a large family of handwriting typefaces with lots of different weights and widths, something that hasn’t really been done for handwriting fonts at the same scale as for typographic superfamilies with over 100 styles like FF Clan by Łukasz Dziedzic or Thesis by Luc(as) de Groot. I intended to make around 10 weights and three widths (condensed, narrow, and normal), so about 30 fonts in total. I figured as my handwriting is already slightly slanted at about 3°, Italic styles would not be needed.I drew some test words without really having a plan how I could manage a project at this scale, and submitted a proposal to the FontShop type board, who accepted the design for inclusion in their FontFont typeface library. This encouraged me to keep working, but I still didn’t know how to pull this off.I spent a good part of the following year trying to figure out how I could turn my handwritten letters into digital outlines efficiently enough. FontShop required me to deliver at least a Latin Extended character set, which contains accented letters for all Latin-based European languages, plus four sets of numerals (lining proportional, lining tabular, oldstyle proportional, and oldstyle tabular), which amounts to something around 500 glyphs per font. Ideally, to keep up the illusion of handwritten letters, you have to include multiple variants of each glyph which are then automatically cycled through OpenType features as you type. At three glyph variants (the minimum, because three instances of the same letter can appear right next to each other in several languages), this would result in 1,500 glyphs per font.First I experimented with actually writing the letters using different sizes of markers to scan and trace them, but even before I scanned the first letter it became obvious to me that I just didn’t write well enough to use the letters as-is. I guess due to lack of training, plus missing calligraphy skills ... Another important lesson was that when you write and your letters work together well in the words you have written, doesn’t mean that they will work in different words and combinations.That is an important difference between lettering and type design. When designing a typeface, it is crucial to see the letters in context as you design them, to make sure the proportions harmonize (even in a handwriting typeface which allows for more inhomogeneity) and the letters work in different combinations. If you write a letter just a bit too large, you can’t just scale it down or the pen strokes will look too thin when compared to other letters. When you go for the look of a marker or felt tip pen, you end up with very messy traced contours made of lots of curve segments. You can’t really efficiently modify them in a font editor, especially when we are talking about 45,000 glyphs in total.My next try was to write the letters in Adobe Illustrator with a Wacom tablet. By using a pressure-sensitive brush tool I hoped to be able to keep the liveliness of written letters, as well as do some optical corrections right at this stage, like thinning the parts of letters where several strokes meet to avoid dark spots in the texture of the letters. Of course we don’t apply this kind of correction when we write on paper, but as I already wrote, designing a typeface is a whole different beast than writing letters.At least now I could put some reference letters next to the letter I was currently writing in my Illustrator template, and keep starting over with a letter until I was satisfied with the basic proportions in relation to my reference letters.The brush tool in Illustrator produces paths that consisted of a center line plus pressure (stroke expansion) information, but OpenType fonts are always made from outline contours. So I had to expand the paths before I could copy them over to FontLab Studio. It turned out the quality of the expanded paths was not that good that it wouldn’t require cleaning up (FontFont had very strict curve quality standards). Even if the expanded paths had been perfect, the prospect of repeating the whole process 45,000 times made me despair.I liked the clean look that writing on the tablet gave my letters. Most handwriting fonts keep some irregularities in the contours and texture of the letters, which looks fine at normal text sizes, but when zoomed in, or the letters being used very large, looks like crap because of the limited resolution of those features.My experience with Illustrator convinced me the only way to get the contour quality I wanted was to use the tablet-written letter only as a guide, and draft a completely new contour on top of it. That was probably still slow, but as I didn’t need exact written letters, but only a rough template for the proportions, I could ditch Illustrator and use FontLab Studio’s inferior brush tool. It didn’t support the tablet pressure information and produced even worse contours than Illustrator, but I just had to put them in the background layer and draw over them.Left: The contour as produced by FontLab’s brush toolRight: The manually redrawn contourWith a bit of practice and after getting up to speed, I managed to finish a glyph in 20 minutes from laying down the most important curve points on top of the template, to perfecting the curves and setting up the correct spacing of the glyph.Still I couldn’t see me doing this for 45,000 glyphs, in addition to working full-time in my regular job, too.I tried to write just the letters of the thinnest and the fattest weight and use a technique called interpolation, which is very common in today’s type design, to produce the intermediate weights. This requires an identical number of contours and the same control point structures in both ‘masters’ of each glyph, but since I was going to construct the contours manually this shouldn’t pose a problem. Or should it? When using interpolation, both masters of a glyph have to look roughly the same, or the interpolation will be possible mathematically, but not aesthetically pleasing. So this approach meant that when mixing different fonts of my family, the letters would look very similar in all weights and styles, not like handwriting at all.Again I was at a point where the whole project didn’t seem feasible. I wanted to finish something at least, so I decided to just draw a Regular and a Bold font independently, and just leave it at that. There went my plans for making the biggest handwriting font family in history.So I concentrated on the Regular weight first, and ambitiously planned to include a set of icons and symbols which are typical for comic fonts, like $#* used in place of expletives, arrows, moon phase symbols, animals, etc.I tried to keep the look of my letters formal, but not calligraphic. To me, my education in West Germany in the 1980s is reflected very much in these letter forms. I learned to write the ‘Vereinfachte Ausgangsschrift’ in primary school and I think it shows. To make the font more versatile, I consulted with an expert in the handwriting styles of different countries, Florian Hardwig, to include local alternate forms for some letters so users could tune the look of the text to match their local culture. I also added some forms of capital letters that were more closely based on the Roman capitalis monumentalis, to give all-caps settings a more classical look if desired (I’m straying quite far from comic lettering by now, you see).My colleague Christoph Koeberlin introduced me to the Pareto principle which says that you can achieve 80% of a result in 20% of the total time, and the remaining 20% will take 80% of the total time. And the nice thing in type design is that you can get away with cheating a lot. So my plan to include three variants of each glyph got downsized considerably.My guess was you didn’t really need three variants of every glyph, but just of the most common ones, like letters and numbers. Most handwriting fonts don’t include variants of letters at all, and hardly anybody notices. For good measure, I added a fourth variant of the twelve most frequently used letters of the English language: e t a o i n s h r d l u. The accented letters were built from parts, and not drawn separately, so they also had three or four variants.The finished Regular font has 1,454 glyphs. The Bold font does not contain all the symbols, and fewer letter variants, because it is only used for emphasis. These two fonts work very well in small sizes up to 12 points.I had finished both fonts when a lucky coincidence happened. A schoolbook publishing house contacted me because they were interested in using my ugly old free handwriting font, but required some design changes and more weights. I proposed to draw a new font family for them, similar in style to the old and new Comic Jens fonts, but more toned down to make it viable for use in text books and other school materials. They accepted my proposal, and we also agreed that I could release the fonts commercially later.So I started again from scratch with all the experience and routine I had gotten through the two finished fonts. Again I wrote on my tablet in FontLab Studio, one design with Hairline weight (20 units for the horizontal strokes on a 2000 units per em grid) and a Black weight (264 units for the horizontals). I had doubled the grid from the usual 1000 units per em because it was impossible to model the round stroke endings in a 20 unit line on a lower resolution. I wanted to interpolate the three requested weights (Light, Regular, Bold) between these extreme designs to be able to adjust the final stroke weights as needed. Imagine drawing a Light weight by hand and then the client decides it should be a tad lighter ... you would have to adjust everything manually again.The new letters were more regularized in appearance for school use, and I had the idea that they could also make a nice headline-size addition to my two text-size fonts. When you write larger, you write more slowly, and your letters don’t jump around as much as when you write small. The publisher wanted their fonts even more toned down, so in the end I did different versions of a number of letters for their selection of weights and for my headline fonts. For my fonts, I decided to produce eleven weights: Hairline, Thin, UltraLight, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Book, Medium, Bold, ExtraBold and Black.I had switched from FontLab Studio 5 to RoboFont as my main font editor by now. RoboFont is much more customizable. The whole interpolation process was a controlled by custom Python scripts to guarantee reproducible results for both branches of the design. All files were kept in a git repository for version and branch control.The interpolation of the two extreme fonts proved helpful, but it was not possible to use only two masters for interpolation. In the Black master, the stroke weights are very variable, bold in wide curves but thinned out where strokes join, while the Hairline master is almost monolinear. When you interpolate a font halfway between these, you end up with a Regular weight where the stroke joins are way too thin. Some letters had to be designed differently in different weights, such as the dollar sign or the sterling sign, where the loop closes up at a certain weight.The round stroke endings also proved difficult to interpolate. The whole font is drawn with virtually no straight lines, just curves. If you interpolate two Bézier curves, the angles at the start and end point of the curve will change if they are not exactly the same angle in the two masters, or if the distance of the control points to the curve point keep exactly the same ratio. You see, there is a lot of math involved at some point.With the large difference of weight and the irregularity of the design between the Hairline and Black masters, the exact conditions for smooth curve points were impossible to maintain. So the process was to interpolate a medium weight, do the optical correction of thickening the stroke joins manually, and to check if all the smooth connections between curves really stayed smooth. They didn’t, and I wrote another Python script that would analyze the curves and automatically adjust most of the kinks that had crept in. Still I had to visually check every one of the 733 glyphs (the Headline styles also have a smaller glyph set than the Text styles). Also, the script smoothed out some corners that actually were there by design, which I had to check and undo on a case by case basis.Green is the raw interpolated version, black the corrected versionAfter inserting the third master into the interpolation space, the stroke weights in the remaining 8 interpolated weights looked good, but my script and visual check to correct the curve transitions were still necessary and took quite a while.After this, my job was done. Until the fonts are ready for release, there is still a lot more work to do, which I happily delegated to Inka Strotmann at Monotype (FontShop had been bought by Monotype in the meantime). In addition to doing the screen optimization, naming, final font production in OTF, TTF and WOFF formats, and quality assurance, most importantly she looked at my designs with a pair of fresh eyes and gave me some suggestions for changes, and found some errors that are inevitable because you just don’t notice them anymore when you spend such a long time looking at and working with your letters.A bit of a letdown late in the process was that the lawyers were uncomfortable with the name FF Comic Jens, because they feared that someone might consider it infringing on the Comic Sans MS trademark, though the name Comic Jens had been out there since 2008 and nobody took offence. I finally found a new name that I’m happy with: FF Uberhand. It is the uber handwriting font family, the handwriting font to rule all other handwriting fonts, and also in German ‘überhand nehmen’ means that something gets out of hand ;)I’m happy to say that the fonts are scheduled for release later this year.The FF Uberhand family in all its gloryIn-use example for a Valentine’s Day card

The short answer is that these laws do not 'make it illegal to grow food.' Primarily, it's targeted against Chinese pet food killing little Fluffy the cat. It is the first comprehensive update to the nation's food safety laws since 1938, in the tail end of the New Deal. Significant exemptions are carved out for small, local, and organic food-growing operations, as well as those that primarily sell directly to consumers.Also, thanks User-9479191553426700399 for getting me to do an hour and change of research on the bill and related topics :)Long answer:For the 111th Congress, here is the THOMAS info for the House Bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.r.00875:And the Senate equivalent: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:s.00510:It appears that the bill was passed in the House 21 December 2010, as part of an amendment to this bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR02751:Following which, it became Public Law no: 111-353 after being signed by the President on 4 January 2011, so during the lame duck session.One major change to the bill before it was passed was the inclusion of the Tester-Hagan amendment, the text of which can be found here:http://farmandranchfreedom.org/sff/Tester-Hagan-amendment-Sept-2010.pdfand a summary here, via the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, whichrepresents small and independent farmers and ranchers:http://farmandranchfreedom.org/sff/Tester-Hagan-amendment-Sept-2010.pdfHere is some extensive discussion about the bill as of 15 November 2010: http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-11-15-food-fight-safety-modernization-act-harm-small-farms/PALLPart of the summary:As you will read in the following pages (yes, that's plural; please note that there are three pages for this epic discussion), they disagree, sometimes violently, about whether S. 510 will do more harm than good. Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) were concerned enough about the answer to propose the Tester-Hagan amendment to S. 510, which exempts certain small farms and food-processing businesses from the requirements. (PDFs available http://tester.senate.gov/Legislation/upload/tester_small_facilities_amendment.pdf and http://tester.senate.gov/Legislation/upload/tester_direct_market_amendment.pdf from Tester's office.) Problem solved, right? Well no. Some think that the Tester amendment dilutes the bill or would let risky farms slip through thesafety nets.As a counter-argument re: the Tester-Hagan small farm exemption, this author believes that the regulations will provide a "chilling effect" on family farmers due to the complexity of provided necessary documentation to secure the exemption:Source: http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/why-tester-amendment-does-not-help.htmlThis is a constituent response letter from Senator McCaskill with an FAQ on the subject:Recently, the Senate passed and the President signed into law the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (P.L. 111-353). This bipartisan legislation, which I supported, provides important new protections for American consumers while also ensuring that family farmers, small producers, farmers' markets, and local gardeners are not subject to new federal requirements.I know that many Missourians have concerns about this legislation. For instance, many have raised questions about how this legislation will affect local organic farmers, their neighborhood farmer's market, or the garden in their back yard. As a lifelong Missourian whose family worked at a feed mill, I understand that agriculture is more than a primary driver of Missouri's economy; it is a part of our state's cultural fabric. I would not have supported any legislation that jeopardized this culture and this legislation does not.Finally, from the FAQ:Will P.L. 111-353 outlaw home gardens and family farms? NO.P.L. 111-353 does not outlaw home gardens or family farms. In fact, the bill explicitly states that the produce standards “shall not apply to produce that is produced by an individual for personal consumption.” In addition, the bill also contains an exemption from regulations for small facilities and small farms, which was purposefully included to protect America’s family farms. This includes food sold through farmers‟ markets, bake sales, road side stands, public events, community supported agriculture, and organizational fundraisers.Source: http://kevinforcongress.blogspot.com/2011/01/fda-food-safety-modernization-act.htmlMy take on this legislation is that is it primarily targeted against international food--read: China--that does not meet American standards. It gives the right to the FDA to initiate mandatory recalls if and only if a corporation fails to do so voluntarily, which was previously limited to infant formula.For the most part, this question is appropriately tagged with "Conspiracy Theories," as far as I can tell. It specifically exempts small farms and personal food growing by Americans from any additional laws or regulations.Another site argues that the impetus for the bill was the tainted pet food incident several months back:Also in December, Congress passed a major food safety bill(P.L. 111-353), led by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., and Reps. John Dingell, D-Mich., Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., Bart Stupak, D-Mich., Frank Pallone, D-N.J., Janice Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., which should provide much-needed additional safeguards for pet food and could strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s oversight of the egg industry. Among its many provisions, the new law sets safety standards for imported foods, requires importers to verify compliance, and gives the FDA better access to records and authority to impose mandatory recalls of contaminated products. This could help prevent problems such as occurred in 2007 when massive amounts of imported pet food tainted with melamine killed or sickened many pets. P.L. 111-353 passed the Senate in the wake of numerous recent outbreaks of food poisoning, including scandals involving egg contamination and filthy, inhumane conditions on factory farms, revealed in investigations conducted by the FDA and The HSUSSource: http://hslf.typepad.com/political_animal/Still to come is three years of implementation, according to United Fresh, the fresh produce association. Quoted:Implementing this law will require over a dozen separate rulemakings and at least 10 guidance documents. The implementation of the legislation will take more than three years.Source: http://www2.unitedfresh.org/forms/store/ProductFormPublic/ (FDA Food Safety Modernization Act White Paper)Apparently, this is the first major overhaul of the food safety regulations since 1938, in the middle of the New Deal.According to Ruell Chappell, the founder of the Well Fed Neighbor Alliance, which supports local food growing at scale--aka somewhere between Big Ag and local gardens--this legislation makes family-based farming more difficult. Ruell states:To be totally honest, they fear this will prove to be yet another example of Big AG supported legislation resulting in further elimination of Small Producers. My good friend and my General Counsel, Joe Maxwell, and my friend Russ Kremer, are working with me to try to make our local food system example a template for duplication . It is our goal to re-establish local food security ( there are only three days of food in Springfield at any given time), give birth to a sustainable local economy with jobs, improve the health of the community and reduce the amount of fuel needed to transport food ( currently our food comes a minimum of 1500 miles).Source: http://wellfedneighbor.ning.com/profiles/blogs/my-response-to-senatorAs far as the law itself goes, it is comprised of four different titles and honestly, I'm not really feeling jazzed about reading the 89-page bill. Real quick, though,. the titles are as follows:Improving capacity to prevent food safety problemsImproving capacity to detect and respond to food safety problemsImproving the safety of imported foodMiscellaneous provisionsLegalese, naturally, but still useful for figuring out the broad focus of the bill. Of course, big government watchdogs should totally fear the "Requirement for guidance relating to post harvest processing of raw oysters." DUN DUN DUNNNN!! /grinI'll rely on the CRS summary found here: http://opencrs.com/document/R40443/2010-10-07/ Naturally, this paper is 90 pages, one more than the law itself *sigh* well, 39 pages of text and the rest of tables and supporting data.Also, OpenCRS is an amazing site, if you're interested in doing legislative research. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is responsive to congressional staff and members, and it is unfortunately opaque to constituents, except through their congressional office, who respond to constituent requests to provide reports. Luckily, OpenCRS works to gather CRS reports and post them online. However, most constituents are unaware of CRS, which is a shame.In the CRS summary, it states the follow:The bills seek to increase frequency of inspections, tighten record-keeping requirements, extend more oversight to certain farms, and mandate product recalls if a firm fails to do so voluntarily. Major portions of the bills are devoted to more scrutiny of food imports, which account for an increasing share of U.S. consumption; food import shipments would have to be accompanied by documentation that they can meet safety standards that are at least equivalent to U.S. standards. Such certifications might be provided by foreign governments or other so-called third parties accredited in advance. The House-passed bill and Senate amendment differ in how to accomplish these objectives. The bills have provisions for certifying or accrediting laboratories, including private laboratories, to conduct sampling and testing of food.This agrees with my earlier statement that at least one major focus of the bill is to provide oversight over food imports. In 1938, refrigeration was just coming into play, so shipment of quickly-spoiling food like fresh produce was much less common than it is today.Additionally:Food safety legislation is a response to a number of perceived problems with the current food safety system. For example, a growing consensus is that the FDA’s current programs are not proactively designed to emphasize prevention, evaluate hazards, and focus inspection resources on areas of greatest risk to public health.This talks about another major focus on current perceptions to limitations of the FDA, which is something the bill probably addresses.Now, none of this is directly relevant to the question about "making it illegal to grow food."The relevant section seems to be titled, "Mitigating Effects on Small Business and Farming Operations," pg. 22-26 in the PDF or as labeled pg. 17-22. As follows:Concerns among farm and rural groups about the potential effects of new food safety requirements on farms and food processors surfaced early in the debate over how to reform U.S. food safety laws. Most vocal were small farms and processors; organizations representing small, organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations; and small livestock operations.Atissue is whether numerous proposed requirements would be more costly and burdensome to small farms and other small businesses than could be justified by the potential public health protections such requirements are intended to provide.Several provisions in the House-passed bill and Senate amendment could potentially affect agricultural producers, including smaller farms and food processors, as well as organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations. The provisions that could have the most direct effect on on-farm activity, especially produce growers, would be the establishment of new standards for produce safety (§ 104 and § 105, respectively). In addition, both bills would require the issuance of updated good agricultural practices, among other bill provisions that could potentially affect small businesses and farming operations. These include facility registration requirements (§ 101 of the House-passed bill; § 102 of the Senate amendment); records access and/or inspection requirements (§ 106 of H.R. 2749; § 101 and § 204 of the Senate amendment); food traceability requirements (§ 107 of H.R. 2749; § 204 of the Senate amendment); hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls (§ 103 of the Senate amendment); targeting of inspection resources (Section 201 of the Senate amendment); and changes in the reportable food registry (§ 112 of H.R. 2749). For more information, see CRS Report RL34612, Food Safety on the Farm: Federal Programs and Legislative Action.The extent to which these other provisions might actually affect small business and farming operations remains unclear, since the specific business requirements under these provisions would be subject to agency rulemaking, as well as the discretion of the HHS Secretary.Considerations for small business could take many forms, including waiving certain requirements, providing additional time for compliance, providing grants and/or technical assistance to aid in compliance, and exempting certain types of businesses from meeting the requirements. Currently the FFDCA exempts some types of businesses from certain food safety requirements. For example, farms, restaurants, other retail food establishments, and certain nonprofit food establishments and fishing vessels are exempt from facility registration requirements under FFDCA § 415.Various approaches might be used to define whether a farm or food processor is a “small” business. Often, a definition may be based on a particular threshold value for a financial or business measure, such as gross cash income (or sales receipts), adjusted gross income (AGI), numbers of employees, or other measures. Gross cash income refers to the sum of all receipts from the sale of crops, livestock, and farm-related goods and services, including any direct payments from the government. For purposes of classifying farms, USDA defines a “small commercial farm” as an operation with gross cash income of $10,000 to less than $250,000 annually; “large farms” are defined as farms with gross cash income of $250,000 to less than $1 million. Under these definitions, USDA data indicate that 22% of all crop and livestock producers were considered to be small commercial farms. The share of small farms will vary depending on commodity. For example, among fruit and vegetable producers who might be affected by requirements under the House and Senate food safety measures, the share of small farms is roughly 10% of all growers in this category. Small business definitions for farms, established by the Small Business Administration (SBA), also are based on annual sales receipts but vary considerably from USDA’s definitions: among most crop producers, SBA defines as a small business those who make no more than $750,000 in sales per year.47 By these standards, more farms would be considered small businesses, with up to one-half of all crop and livestock producers defined as small.Elsewhere in farm legislation, adjusted gross income (AGI) is used to differentiate farm size. AGI is a common measure of income for tax purposes, combining income from all sources. Business income contributes to AGI on a net basis, that is, after business expenses. Thus, it is comparable to profit: sales minus expenses and also taxable deductions. In the periodic omnibus farm bill, an AGI limit is used to differentiate wealthier farm households as a means test for the maximum amount of income that an individual can earn and still remain eligible for commodity program benefits, including any direct payments from the government. The 2008 farm bill tightened these limits by reducing the AGI limit to $500,000 of non-farm AGI and $750,000 of farm AGI. Given that most business information is proprietary, data are limited on the share of commodity producers (farms and food processors) that have an annual AGI of less than $500,000. Information for U.S. farms indicate that farms with less than $500,000 AGI account for the vast majority (more than 95%) of farm numbers.For food processors, often different business measures are used to define small businesses. SBA definitions of small food processors are based on the number of employees at a business. Among most food processors, a small business is defined by the SBA as a business with no more than 500 employees. By this definition, nearly all (97%) of all food manufacturers would be considered small businesses based on U.S. Census Bureau data.FDA regulations also define certain small food processing businesses, but they are case by case and not inclusive. For example, FDA’s current HACCP regulations exempt small juice processors “employing fewer than 500 persons." Accordingly, available data indicate that as many as 84% of businesses that make juice would be not be covered by the HAACP requirements. Very small businesses would also be exempt, and so defined if they meet one of the following three criteria: “annual sales of less than $500,000, total annual sales greater than $500,000 but total food sales less than $50,000, or operations that employ fewer than an average of 100 full-time equivalent employees and sell fewer than 100,000 units of juice in the United States.” Producers of “raw agricultural ingredients of juice,” such as fruit and vegetable growers, would not be covered by the HAACP requirements.This section is talking about the definitions of small farms that would be exempted from most of the regulations, seemingly addressing the concerns raised by the Well Fed Neighbor Alliance. I'm not an expert of the subject, though. It primarily addresses the current state of things, while the next section covers proposed legislative action, subtitled "Legislative Proposals":Although both the House-passed bill and the Senate amendment contain requirements that might affect small business and farming operations, both bills also seek to take into account the needs of small businesses and provide for coordination of enforcement and education activities with others such as USDA and state authorities.The House-passed bill contains additional provisions that are intended to address potential effects of the food safety requirements on small, organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations, among other related provisions. In particular, it would exempt from the facility registration requirements most commodity producers that sell directly to consumers, including an “operation that sells food directly to consumers if the annual monetary value of sales of the food products from the farm or by an agent of the farm to consumers exceeds the annual monetary value of sales of the food products to all other buyers” (§ 101(b)(1)). The House-passed bill also would require that any regulations governing performance standards “take into consideration, consistent with ensuring enforceable public health protection, the impact on small-scale and diversified farms, and on wildlife habitat, conservation practices, watershed-protection efforts, and organic production methods” (§ 104(b)).Initially, S. 510 was modified by the Senate HELP Committee to require that the HHS Secretary “provide sufficient flexibility to be applicable to various types of entities engaged in the production and harvesting of raw agricultural commodities, including small businesses and entities that sell directly to consumers, and be appropriate to the scale and diversity of the production and harvesting of such commodities” (§ 103 and § 105, among other sections). Other committee modifications require consideration of federal conservation and environmental standards and policies including wildlife conservation, and assurances that these provisions will not conflict with or duplicate those of the national Organic Foods Production Act (also § 105).The Senate amendment includes additional provisions intended to address the potential effects of the food safety requirements on small business and other farming operations. These include allowances for HHS to exempt or limit compliance requirements for certain types of farming operations and food processors, along with provisions that would allow the HHS Secretary the discretion to exclude certain operations, if it is determined that these are low risk and/or do not present a risk of “serious adverse health consequences or death”; and assurances that any new regulations do not conflict with or duplicate other federal policies and standards, and that they minimize regulatory burden and unnecessary paperwork and the number of separate standards imposed on the facility (for example, the registration, HACCP, produce standards, and traceability requirements in §§ 101, 103, 105, and 204). In addition, HHS would be required to publish “small entity compliance policy guides” to assist small entities in complying with some proposed requirements, such as those regarding registration, HACCP, produce standards, and traceability. Implementation would be delayed for small and very small businesses (as defined by the Secretary) for the HACCP and produce standards requirements, and there would be assurances of “sufficient flexibility” for producers, including small businesses and entities that sell directly to consumers, for the HACCP, produce standards, and traceability provisions.Despite these additional considerations in the Senate amendment, Senator Jon Tester has stated that he intends to offer further amendments to address small farm interests if the Senate food safety measure reaches the Senate floor in the 111th Congress. Senator Tester first announced in spring 2010 that he planned to introduce two amendments to the Senate committee-reported bill, S. 510. Under one amendment, certain commodity producers would face limited trace-back and record-keeping requirements if the “average annual adjusted gross income [AGI] of such facility for the previous 3-year period is less than $500,000”; another amendment would exempt producers who sell directly to market if “the annual value of sales of food directly to consumers, hotels, restaurants, or institutions exceeds the annual value of sales of food to all other buyers.” These amendments were not ultimately included in the Senate manager’s amendment.In September 2010, Senator Tester, along with Senator Kay Hagan, announced an updated version of this amendment. The modified Tester-Hagan amendment would establish “modified requirements for qualified facilities” for so-called “very small” businesses, among other provisions for both small and very small businesses (to be defined in regulation). Under this proposed amendment, qualified facilities would not be subject to the facility registration requirements under FFDCA § 415; instead they would be required to submit to HHS relevant documentation showing that they have implemented preventative food safety controls and evidence that they are in compliance with state, local, county, or other applicable non-federal food safety laws, among other documentation. Such modified requirements would apply to producers considered “very small” and would include operations that have annual sales of less than $500,000 (defined not as AGI, but as the three-year average “annual monetary value of sales,” adjusted for inflation) and whose value of sales directly to “qualified end-users” exceeds all other sales. Qualified end-users would include consumers or a restaurant or retail food establishment that is located in the same state or less than 400 miles from the qualified facility, or that is buying food for sale directly to consumers. Implementation deadlines would also be delayed for small and very small businesses, following promulgation of any applicable regulations under the newly enacted law. The Tester-Hagan amendment also includes other clarifying language with respect to the exemption for direct farm marketing and sales. The provision further would require that HHS conduct a study of the food processing sector, in conjunction with USDA.Many farm groups have expressed support for these proposed amendments. However, one of the leading produce industry groups, United Fresh Produce Association (UFPA), is urging the Senate not to add “exemptions based on the size of the operation, production practices, or geographic location for food being sold in the commercial market” to its food safety proposal. In addition to broader industry concerns about the need to preserve consumer confidence in the safety of all marketed produce, another industry concern is whether small foreign producers might also be exempt, if small U.S. producers were to be exempt (given prevailing U.S. equivalency standards). Some consumer groups, including the Consumers Union, have expressed concern that the proposed amendments would create “too great a loophole” in the food safety requirements, among other concerns.The key paragraph seems to be the second one, specifically talking about "small, organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations, among other related provisions." These food-growing operations would be exempt if they sell directly to consumers, meaning your kids' road-side stands or the farm stands in Gilroy, CA would both be excluded from any of these regulations, as long as a majority of their sales came from direct-to-consumer sales. Additionally, I believe the Tester-Hagan amendment referenced in the final two paragraphs did eventually pass. EDIT: Re: Bill McDonald in the comments and inflation-adjusting AGI:Adds a new exemption for businesses that gross less than half a milliondollars (adjusted for inflation) and that sell more than half of their products directly to consumers or to local restaurants and retail establishments. These businesses must submit paperwork showing that they qualify for the exemption and that they comply with state and local laws in order to be exempt from the new HACCP-type requirements.Source: http://farmandranchfreedom.org/Tester-Hagan-explanationConclusionTo reiterate, it seems extremely unlikely that the scenario described by the question will come to pass through the passage of these bills into law. The primary focus is to prevent Chinese pet food from killing Fluffy, not stopping little Johnny from growing some fruits and veggies in the backyard and becoming little entrepreneurial Johnny by selling them on the roadside in home sweet neighborhood.

Most comprehensive list ever.List of Lists☆NameDescription★★★Good Blog Post Resources about Algorithm and Data Structures — CodeforcesA collection of fantastic tutorial blog posts written by Codeforces users. Some intriguing ones include Palindromic Trees, Policy Based Data Structures, and a lot more.★★★Data Structures and Algorithms — CodeChef DiscussA very complete list of competitive programming resources. A must-have in your browser bookmark.★★★How to prepare for ACM — ICPC? — GeeksforGeeksA detailed walk-through of the preparations for ACM-ICPC.SyllabusesFind out what topics you need to learn.☆NameDescription★★★IOI SyllabusA detailed syllabus on which IOI contestants will be tested. This is still somewhat relevant to ACM-ICPC.★★★How to prepare for ACM — ICPC? — GeeksforGeeksA detailed walk-through of the preparations for ACM-ICPC.★★☆Programming Camp SyllabusA list of important topics in competitive programming with exercise problems.★★☆Juniors Training Sheet, by Mostafa Saad IbrahimSimple problems for newcomersTutorial WebsitesAwesome websites with great tutorials.☆NameDescription★★★Topcoder Data Science TutorialsA list of tutorials written by respected Topcoder members. Many top programmers started learning data sciences from here.★★★E-Maxx (Russian), (English)A tutorial website widely used and referenced in the Russian-speaking competitive programming community. Only a small fraction of the original site is translated into English, but Google Translate would work okay.★★☆Algorithms — GeeksforGeeksA website with a large archive of nicely written articles on different topics. It is a great complimentary resource for algorithm courses.★★☆PEGWikiA website with amazing in-depth wiki-like writeups on many topics. It's far better than those on Wikipedia in my opinion.★★☆Notes — HackerEarthA great crowdsourcing platform for tutorials. Also visit Code Monk.★★☆USA Computing Olympiad (USACO)Contains several training pages on its website which are designed to develop one's skills in programming solutions to difficult and varied algorithmic problems at one's own pace.★★☆basecsA blog with in-depth, illustrated tutorials on basic algorithms and data structures.★★☆Competitive Programming — CommonloungeShort video tutorials for beginner and intermediate concepts. Advanced tutorials selected from the best ones available on various CP blogs.★☆☆OLYMPIADS IN INFORMATICSAn international journal focused on the research and practice of professionals who are working in the field of teaching and learning informatics to talented student.★☆☆algolist (Russian)A Russian website devoted to algorithms of all sorts. Some topics listed on this website seems pretty interesting.★★☆演算法筆記 (Algorithm Notes) (Chinese)One of the most popular tutorial websites among the Taiwanese competitive programming community. The maintainer for this website spends immense efforts on researching algorithms.★★☆国家集训队论文 1999-2015 (Papers from Chinese IOI training camps) (Chinese)Papers from the Chinese IOI training camps. It's interesting for the fact that one can tell different regions emphasize different things.Open CoursesConsider beginning your competitive programming journey with these awesome courses!☆NameDescription★★☆Code Monk, by HackerEarthA fantastic step-by-step tutorial on the essential topics in competitive programming.★★★Stanford CS 97SI: Introduction to Competitive Programming ContestsOffers comprehensive lecture slides and a short list of exercise problems.★★☆How to Win Coding Competitions: Secrets of ChampionsA course by ITMO University on competitive coding on edX.★★☆Codechef's Indian Programming CampVideo Lectures from Codechef's Indian Programming Camp 2016. Lectures given by top competitive programmers like Sergey Kulik, Kevin Charles Atienza and Anudeep Nekkanti. Primarily focused on exploring these concepts by applying them to actual competitive contest problems.★★☆Reykjavik T-414-ÁFLV: A Competitive Programming CourseAn awesome course taught by Bjarki Ágúst Guðmundsson (SuprDewd). These lectures feature neat slides and a nice list of problems to practice.★★☆NCTU DCP4631: Problem Solving and Programming TechniquesA course on basic topics featuring good lecture slides.★☆☆Materials (English) from Arabic Competitive Programming ChannelSome materials (slides & source codes) covering a broad range of algorithmic topicsOpen Courses for Algorithms and Data Structures☆NameDescription★★★prakhar1989/awesome-courses#algorithmsA fantastic list of open courses offered by notable institutions (MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley ... etc.).★★★MIT SMA 5503: Introduction to AlgorithmsLectured by Prof. Charles Leiserson (one of the coauthors of Introduction to Algorithms) and Prof. Erik Demaine (a brilliant professor who has made remarkable breakthroughs in data science), the course offers great materials, accompanied by intuitive and comprehensive analyses.★★☆UIUC Algorithm Courselecture notes, homeworks, exams, and discussion problems covering a broad range of algorithmic topicsBooksA list of recommended books for competitive programming.☆NameDescription★★☆Competitive Programming, by Steven and Felix HalimThis book contains a collection of relevant data structures, algorithms, and programming tips. It's a well-received book. ... The first edition is free for download (pdf).★★☆Programming Challenges: The Programming Contest Training Manual, by Steven Skiena and Miguel RevillaThis book includes more than 100 programming challenges, as well as the theory and key concepts necessary for approaching them. Problems are organized by topic, and supplemented by complete tutorial material.★★☆Competitive Programmer's Handbook, by Antti Laaksonen (pllk)An introduction to competitive programming for aspiring IOI and ICPC contestants. Free to download (pdf).★★★Looking for a Challenge, written by a group of authors associated with the Polish OlympiadsMost of the problems described in the book are really hard but they are explained in such a way that even beginners can understand. It appears to be out of stock (as of Aug, 2016), but you can reserve one on their official website.★★☆Computational Geometry: Algorithms and Applications, by Mark de Berg, Otfried Cheong, Marc van Kreveld, Mark OvermarsThis is a well-written book which covers a broad range of computational geometry problems.★☆☆The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Programming Contests, by Nite NimajnebThis book is free for download (pdf). This book covers various topics relevant to competitive programming.★★★プログラミングコンテストチャレンジブック (Japanese), by 秋葉拓哉, 岩田陽一, 北川宜稔An absolutely phenomenal book. The contents, organized in a very coherent manner, are nothing short of amazing. ... 培養與鍛鍊程式設計的邏輯腦：世界級程式設計大賽的知識、心得與解題分享 (Chinese Traditional)★★☆算法竞赛入门经典 (Chinese), by 刘汝佳The Art of Algorithms and Programming Contests (English), 打下好基礎：程式設計與演算法競賽入門經典 (Chinese Traditional)★★☆算法竞赛入门经典——训练指南 (Chinese), by 刘汝佳, 陈锋提升程式設計的解題思考力─國際演算法程式設計競賽訓練指南 (Chinese Traditional)★★★算法艺术与信息学竞赛 (Chinese), by 刘汝佳, 黄亮An old-time classic. It's old but the contents in this book are still considered to be very difficult by today's standards.Books for Algorithms☆NameDescription★★★Introduction to Algorithms, by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest and Clifford SteinAlso known as CLRS (taken from name initials), this book is often referred to as the "bible" for algorithms and data structures. It's one of the most popular textbooks for university algorithm courses. This book covered various algorithms and data structures in great detail. The writing is more rigorous and can be difficult to some.★★☆Algorithm Design, by Jon Kleinberg and Éva TardosThis book revolves around techniques for designing algorithms. It's well-organized and written in a clear, understandable language. Each chapter is backed with practical examples and helpful exercises. The chapter on network flow is highly praised by lots. ... The lecture slides that accompany the textbook are available on its official website.★★☆The Algorithm Design Manual, by Steven S. SkienaThe book is written in more readable text. Some find it comprehensive than other books. You can also find some good resources (including the author's own video lectures) on its official website.★★★Algorithms, by Robert Sedgewick and Kevin WayneThis book is neatly categorized, coupled with elaborate explanations and fantastic illustrations. It is used in some IOI training camps as a textbook.Books for Mathematics☆NameDescription★★☆Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications, by Kenneth H. RosenDiscrete Mathematics is closely relevant to competitive programming. This book provides comprehensive materials on a wide range of topics including: Logics and Proofs, Sets, Functions, Sequences, Matrices, Number Theory, Recursion, Counting, Probablity, Graphs, Trees and Boolean Alegra to name but a few.★★☆Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, by Ronald L. Graham, Donald E. Knuth, Oren PatashnikThe book offers a deeper insight into Discrete Mathematics with more emphases on number-related topics.★★☆Linear Algebra and Its Applications, by David C. Lay, Steven R. Lay, Judi J. McDonaldThe book does a brilliant job at bridging the gap between a physical system (for scientists and engineers) and an abstract system (for mathematicians).★★☆Introduction to Probability, by Charles M. Grinstead, J. Laurie SnellThis is a well-written introductory probabilities book. ... It's free for download (pdf) (released under GNU Free Documentation License).★★☆How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method, by G. PolyaAn old-time classic. In this book, the author provides a systematic way to solve problems creatively.Sites for PracticeGood online judge systems / contest platforms to practice.☆NameDescription★★★CodeforcesCodeforces is one of, if not, the most popular contest platforms out there. Currently maintained by Saratov State University, it features regular contests and countless awesome original problems. Additionally, every contest provides immediate helpful tutorials (usually) written by the authors themselves. Codeforces also houses a strong and engaging community. All in all, one would indeed learn and improve tremendously here.★★★TopcoderTopcoder has been around since 2001. Rich in history, It's considered to be one of the most prestigious organizations when it comes to technology competitions. Hundreds of SRMs gave birth to an abundant problemset. Problems here are typically more challenging than others and Topcoder therefore appeals to many elite programmers. The annual Topcoder Open (TCO) is also a widely-discussed event.★★★Google Code JamGoogle Code Jam is certainly one of the most highly-esteemed programming competitions. The competition consists of unique programming challenges which must be solved in a fixed amount of time. Competitors may use any programming language and development environment to obtain their solutions.★★☆CodeChefCodeChef is a non-profit educational initiative of Directi. It's a global competitive programming platform and has a large community of programmers that helps students and professionals test and improve their coding skills. Its objective is to provide a platform for practice, competition and improvement for both students and professional software developers. Apart from this, it aims to reach out to students while they are young and inculcate a culture of programming in India.★★★SPOJThe SPOJ platform is centered around an online judge system. It holds a staggering amount of problems prepared by its community of problem setters or taken from previous programming contests, some of which are great problems for practice (refer to the Problem classifiers section). SPOJ also allows advanced users to organize contests under their own rules.★★☆TimusTimus Online Judge is the largest Russian archive of programming problems with automatic judging system. Problems are mostly collected from contests held at the Ural Federal University, Ural Championships, Ural ACM ICPC Subregional Contests, and Petrozavodsk Training Camps.★☆☆HDUHDU is an online judge maintained by Hangzhou Dianzi University. It's home to many classic problems from the Chinese IOI scene.★★★AtCoderAtCoder is a new but phenomenal contest platform created by a team of highly-rated Japanese competitive programmers.★★☆Aizu Online JudgeAizu online judge is a contest platform and problem archive hosted by The University of Aizu. It has a lot of great problems from programming competitions in Japan.★★☆UVaAn old-school problem archive / online judge with rich history. Thousands of problems, including many classic ones, are featured here. However, it is strongly advised that you practice with uHunt following its "Competitive Programming Exercise" section.★★☆HackerRankHackerRank is a company that focuses on competitive programming challenges for both consumers and businesses. HackerRank's programming challenges can be solved in a variety of programming languages and span multiple computer science domains.★★☆POJPOJ is an online judge with many great problems maintained by Peking University. Most Chinese competitive programmers began their journey here.★★☆Project EulerProject Euler features a stunning set of good math problems. It also hosts a forum where people can discuss.★☆☆HackerearthHackerEarth is a startup technology company based in Bangalore, India that provides recruitment solutions.★☆☆Caribbean Online JudgeCOJ is hosted by University of Informatics Sciences (UCI, by its acronym in Spanish), located in Cuba. Feature ACM ICPC and Progresive constest styles, mostly from Caribbean and Latin American problem setters, also has problem classifier and contest calendar.★★☆CS AcademyNew in the competitive programming scene, CS Academy is a growing online judge that hosts competitions once every two weeks. It supports live chat, interactive lessons and an integrated online editor (that actually works).★★☆Russian Code CupProgramming competitions powered by Mail.Ru: почта, поиск в интернете, новости, игры Group. Competition consists of 3 qualification, 1 elimination and 1 final rounds. For each round contestants are given 4-8 problems which must be solved in a fixed amount of time.★★☆CodeFightsCodeFights is a website for competitive programming practice and interview preparation. It features daily challenges of varying difficulty, an archive of problems and regular (every 15 minutes) mini-tournaments. Good for beginners.Problem ClassifiersSites classifying programming problems.Choose a category (eg. DP) of interest and practice problems on that topic.☆NameDescription★★★A2 Online JudgeMixed★★★Problem ClassifierSPOJ★★☆UVa Online JudgeCP Book★☆☆Codeforces TagsCF (DP)★★☆HackerRankHackerRank★★☆Juniors Training Sheet, by Mostafa Saad IbrahimSimple problems for newcomers★★☆Lucky貓的 UVA（ACM）園地 (Chinese)UVa★★☆Topcoder problem archiveList of problems with categories and complexity levelsContest CalendarsCalendars for impending programming contests.(Never miss another contest!)☆NameDescription★★★Programming Contest Calendar — HackerRankGoogle Calendar export available★★☆clist.byAPI available for use★★☆Coding Calendar (Android App)★★☆Coder's Calendar: Android App, Chrome Extension, Firefox Add-on★★★CodeHorizon: iOS App, Android AppSites for QuestionsThese are great sites to ask questions.Paste your codes at ideone, pastebin or other sites to avoid formatting issues.☆NameDescription★★★CodeforcesFor quick answers, Codeforces is definitely the go-to place to ask about anything competition-related.★★★Competitive Programming — QuoraYou would typically get more elaborate answers on Quora, but you might not have your questions answered straightaway.★★★Competitive Programming — CommonloungeMost questions get a response in < 30 minutes. Questions can range from beginner simple questions to in-depth questions.★★☆Theoretical Computer Science Stack ExchangeThis place is generally for the academics, so don't ask questions about contest problems here.★★☆Algorithmic Competitive Programming Stack Exchange (proposed)Competitive programming enthusiasts on Stack Exchange are discussing whether to create a new competitive programming Q&A site.ImplementationsAlgorithm & Data structure implementations.☆NameDescription★★★CodeLibrary, by Andrey Naumenko (indy256)CodeLibrary contains a large collection of implementations for algorithms and data structures in Java and C++. You may also visit his GitHub Repository.★★★spaghetti-source/algorithm, by Takanori MAEHARA (@tmaehara)High-quality implementations of many hard algorithms and data structures.★★★kth-competitive-programming/kactl, by Simon Lindholm (simonlindholm) et al.A phenomenally organized, documented and tested team notebook from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. One of the most well-crafted team notebooks (contest libraries) I've ever seen.★★☆jaehyunp/stanfordacmStanford's team notebook is well maintained and the codes within are of high-quality.★★☆ngthanhtrung23/ACM_Notebook_new, by team RR Watameda (I_love_Hoang_Yen, flashmt, nguyenhungtam) from National University of SingaporeRR Watameda represented National University of Singapore for the 2016 ACM-ICPC World Finals. The items in this notebook are pretty standard and well-organized.★★☆bobogei81123/bcw_codebook, by team bcw0x1bd2 (darkhh, bobogei81123, step5) from National Taiwan Universitybcw0x1bd2 represented National Taiwan University for the 2016 ACM-ICPC World Finals. This notebook contains robust implementations for advanced data structures and algorithms.★☆☆foreverbell/acm-icpc-cheat-sheet, by foreverbell (foreverbell)A notebook with some advanced data structures and algorithms including some from the China informatics scene.★☆☆igor's code archive, by Igor Naverniouk (Abednego)A good notebook by Igor Naverniouk who is currently a software engineer at Google and part of the Google Code Jam team.Language SpecificsLanguages and other miscellaneous knowledge.C/C++☆NameDescription★★☆Power up C++ with the Standard Template Library — Topcoder: Part 1, Part 2An introductory tutorial on basic C++ STLs.★★☆Yet again on C++ input/output — CodeforcesLearn more about C++ I/O optimizations.★★☆C++ Tricks — Codeforces ... What are some cool C++ tricks to use in a programming contest? — QuoraPlentiful C++ tricks for competitive programming. Note that some should be used with care.★★★C++ STL: Policy based data structures — Codeforces: Part 1, Part 2Detailed introduction to the extra data structures implemented in GNU C++. The official documentation can be found here.★☆☆C++11 FAQ (English, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean)A list of FAQs regarding C++11 collected and written by Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++.Java☆NameDescription★★☆How to read input in Java — tutorial — CodeforcesLearn how to read input faster. This is a must-read for those who intend to use Java for competitive programming★★☆How to sort arrays in Java and avoid TLE — CodeforcesSome tips on how to avoid hitting the worst case of quick sort★★☆BigNum arithmetic in Java — Let's outperform BigInteger! — CodeforcesA basic but faster custom BigInteger class★★☆EZ Collections, EZ Life (new Java library for contests) — CodeforcesA Java library for contests written by Alexey Dergunov (dalex). ArrayList, ArrayDeque, Heap, Sort, HashSet, HashMap, TreeSet, TreeMap, TreeList and pair classes are implementedMiscellaneous☆NameDescription★★★Bit Twiddling HacksA huge compiled list of bit manipulation tricks.★★★Comparing Floating Point Numbers, 2012 Edition — Random ASCIIEverything you need to know about floating point numbers. A must read especially for geometry topics.★★☆Object-Oriented C Style Languages: C++, Objective-C, Java, C# — a side-by-side reference sheetA detailed side-by-side reference sheet for common syntaxes.ToolsAwesome tools that will make your life easier.IDEs☆NamePlatformDescription★★★VimCLI / Cross-PlatformVim is one of the most popular text editors among advanced programmers. It allows text-editing to be done very efficiently with solely keystrokes. Vim is also highly configurable, extensible and integrates with shells (command lines) really well. The only setback about Vim is that it has a high learning curve for beginners.★★★EmacsCLI / Cross-PlatformEmacs is another popular text editor (or development environment to be more precise). The debate on "Vim vs. Emacs" is constantly brought up due to their popularity. Basically Emacs is more than just a text editor. It has plugins like file managers, web browsers, mail clients and news clients that allows users to performs these tasks directly inside Emacs. Emacs is "heavier" because of this, but it arguably has a relatively easier learning curve for beginners.★★★Far ManagerHybrid / WindowsFar Manager is the most widely-used editor in the RU/CIS competitive programming community. It's actually a file manager in its bare bones, but you can install FarColorer — a syntax highlighter plugin to program on it. Properly configured, Far Manager allows you to navigate between files very efficiently while writing your codes.★★★Code::BlocksGUI / Cross-PlatformCode::Blocks is the go-to IDE for C/C++. It's a full-fledged, versatile IDE with numerous great features. Code::Blocks is usually provided along with Vim in programming contests.★★★IntelliJ IDEAGUI / Cross-PlatformIntelliJ IDEA is certainly one of the best IDEs for Java. It's used by most competitive programmers who use Java as their main language. Be sure to check out CHelper, a very handy plugin written for programming contests.★★☆Sublime TextGUI / Cross-PlatformSublime Text is an extraordinary text editor. Packed with powerful and innovative features like Multiple Carets, Minimaps and Command Palletes, it attracts a strong and engaging community. Sublime Text is highly extensible, so be sure to have Package Control installed and explore perhaps one of the largest catalogue of plugins!★★☆EclipseGUI / Cross-PlatformEclipse is another good IDE for Java. It's an okay alternative to Intellij IDEA (A tad inferior to IDEA by today's standards). Sometimes contests only provide Eclipse for some reason, so this might be a good incentive to try and use Eclipse.★★☆CLionGUI / Cross-PlatformCLion, produced by JetBrains — the same company who made Intellij IDEA, is a powerful IDE for C++. Free educational licenses are available OR you can try out their EAP (Early Access Program)which is still free as of Aug, 2016. You may want to turn off its code inspection feature as it will cause quite a bit of lag.★☆☆Other IDEsMixedVisual Studio is the IDE to use in case you want to code in C#, but beware that it will be a 7GB installation. ... Both Atom and Visual Studio Code are built with Electron (written in JavaScript) and therefore somewhat resource-hogging. ... CodeLite is a newly rising IDE. Beware that the load-up and project-creation times can be extraordinary.Personal use☆NameDescription★★★VisuAlgoA website featuring a large collection of visualization tools for algorithms and data structures.★★★General Practice Helpers: ... CHelper(IntelliJ IDEA) (manual) ... caide (Visual Studio, CodeLite) ... JHelper (AppCode, CLion)Great tools that parse contests, inline library codes and provide testing frameworks. They save you from spending your precious time on switching windows and copy-pasting back and forth.★★☆Codeforces Parsers: ... Codeforces Parser... GoCF ... cfparser (emacs)These tools parse Codeforces contest problems and help run sample tests.★★★The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS)A stunning encyclopedia with a database of countless integer sequences. It also features a powerful search engine. Sometimes a seemingly difficult combinatorics problem could be equivalent to a simple or studied integer sequence.★★☆Syntax Highlighters: ... tohtml.com ... markup.su ... hilite.meVery handy for creating slides or team notebooks with pretty, formatted code snippets. Just copy the highlighted code snippets and paste them in your favorite WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor!★★☆Code Sharing: ... Ideone.com ... Pastebin.com ... Ubuntu PastebinThese tools generate semi-permanent pages for code sharing. Very useful especially when you're trying to get someone else to look into your code.★★☆IneffableA simple command-line grader for local grading.★★☆uDebugA platform that provides expected outputs for user-specified inputs to problems on the UVa Online Judge. Some problems also provide additional test cases for debugging.Contest Preparation☆NameDescription★★★polygonpolygon provides a platform and a rich set of tools for professional contest preparation. ... An example: Validators with testlib.h — Codeforces★★☆Graph EditorA fantasic tool to create and visualize graphs.★★☆tcframeA C++ framework for generating test cases of competitive programming problems.★★★Virtual Judge (vjudge)Virtual Judge (vjudge) allows users to create virtual contests with problems from notable problem archives.★★☆BNU Online JudgeBNU Online Judge also allows users to create virtual contests.★★☆KattisKattis assists in contest preparation (E-mail them for assistance).CommunityMeet the god-like competitive programmers!Learn helpful tips, tutorials and insights from these people :)BlogsName (Handle)Blog NameCodeforces blogsPetr Mitrichev (Petr)Algorithms WeeklyMakoto Soejima (rng_58)rng_58's blogBruce Merry (bmerry)Entropy always increasesPrzemysław Dębiak (SomeGuyTookMyHandle)Psyho's blogAnudeep Nekkanti (anudeep2011)Namespace Anudeep ;)vexorian (vexorian)vexorian's blogAshar Fuadi (fushar)Fushar's blogLiJie Chen (WJMZBMR)WJMZBMR (Chinese)Huang I-Wen (doreamon, dreamoon)小月的耍廢日誌 (Chinese)Shiang-Yun Yang (morris1028)Morris' Blog (Chinese)Yuhao Du (TooDifficuIt, TooSimple, xudyh)xudyh (Chinese)Youtube and LivestreamsName (Handle)LinkPetr Mitrichev (Petr)YoutubeEgor Kulikov (Egor)YoutubeAdam Bardashevich (subscriber)YoutubeBohdan Pryshchenko (I_love_Tanya_Romanova)Twitch, YoutubeVladimir Smykalov (enot.1.10)Twitch, YoutubeAleksandar Abas (Alex7)YoutubeMostafa Saad Ibrahim (mostafa.saad.fci)Competitive Programming Youtube (Arabic Speech-English Text)Tushar RoyYoutube, with many tutorial videos.QuoraVisit Competitive Programming — Quora (Top 10 Most Viewed Writers).Important Community FiguresDescriptionBill PoucherExecutive Director of ACM-ICPC. CS Professor at Baylor University.Michal Forišek (misof)Organizer of IPSC and IOI. CS Teacher at Comenius University in Slovakia. Algorithm and CS Education Researcher. Former highly-rated competitive programmer.Ahmed Aly (ahmed_aly)Founder of A2OJ. HackerRank Lead Software Engineer. Former member of the Google Code Jam team.Competitive ProgrammersThanh Trung Nguyen (I_love_Hoang_Yen)Brian Bi (bbi5291)Jonathan Paulson (jonathanpaulson)Miguel Oliveira (mogers)Egor Suvorov (yeputons)Michal Danilák (Mimino)Bohdan Pryshchenko (I_love_Tanya_Romanova)Vladimir Novakovski (vnovakovski)Nick Wu (xiaowuc1)Cosmin NegruseriLalit Kundu (darkshadows)Ashish Kedia (ashish1294)Johnny Ho (random.johnnyh)Joshua Pan (lonerz)Anudeep Nekkanti (anudeep2011)Steven Hao (stevenkplus)Raziman T.V. (razimantv)Other Awesome ResourcesArticlesInformative and helpful articlesSubjectOverview of Programming Contests, by Przemysław Dębiak (Psyho, SomeGuyTookMyHandle)The 'science' of training in competitive programming — Codeforces, by Thanh Trung Nguyen (I_love_Hoang_Yen)If you ask me how to improve your algorithm competition skill, I will give you the link of this blog. — Codeforces, by Huang I-Wen (dreamoon, doreamon)How to prepare for ACM — ICPC? — GeeksforGeeks, by Vishwesh ShrimaliComplete reference to competitive programming — HackerEarth, by Ravi OjhaGetting started with the sport of competitive programming — HackerEarth, by Triveni MahathaFAQsFine answers to frequently-asked questionsQuestionHow do I start competitive programming? — QuoraHow can I become good at competitive programming? — Quora ... What is the best strategy to improve my skills in competitive programming in 2-3 months? — Quora ... What is a good 6 month plan to start and progress through competitive programming? — QuoraHow is competitive programming different from real-life programming? — QuoraWhat have you gained from competitive programming? — QuoraAwesome ListsRelevant awesome listsNameLinkC++ BooksThe Definitive C++ Book Guide and List — Stack OverflowJava BooksWhat are the best books to learn Java? — QuoraAdvanced Java BooksWhat is the best book for advanced Java programming? — QuoraAlgorithmstayllan/awesome-algorithmsAlgorithm Visualizationenjalot/algovisMathrossant/awesome-mathC++fffaraz/awesome-cppJavaakullpp/awesome-javaCoursesprakhar1989/awesome-coursesFree Programming Booksvhf/free-programming-booksInterview QuestionsNameDescriptionCareerCupThe most popular website for software engineering interview preparation.InterviewBitFeatures intriguing and refreshing game-play designs which are designed to invoke one's interest in practicing.Awesome InterviewsA curated list of awesome interview questions