DSA or Data Structures and Algorithms, the most asked topic in today's interviews in every small and large software role, have been growing too much more of a trend than as a career, owing to the attractive perks and salary packages that keep on getting published by the media.

CP or Competitive Programming, on the other hand, can be considered as some kind of a platform where you enhance your coding or specifically logic-building skills in programming. Numerous platforms are already so popular that many present their performances in those platforms in their resume in software engineer roles.

Let's begin with CP first. It's a methodology and a competitive platform to grow your logic-building skills so that you can implement them in the software domain and solve numerous real-life problems. CP includes topics like basic maths, bit manipulation, etc. in which you can gain mastery by practicing only. In addition to these, there are constraints, time complexity analysis, and space complexity analysis that are to be considered to solve any problem before approaching the end of any solution.

Now DSA is the way or the medium through which we can achieve solutions to a particular problem. Generally, to optimize the solutions in terms of space or in terms of time, we can use Data Structures efficiently. DSA, the topic as such is focussed by interviewers but CP, on the other hand, is the core of the online rounds in the hiring process for any software-based role. In addition to that, mastering CP requires a lot to practice in Maths, Number Theory and Theorems and also Bit Manipulation. All these topics are to some extent learned in DSA as well, but CP requires advanced knowledge about the same topics.

So, in conclusion to the same, CP is by far a vast knowledge to study so that one can implement logical skills to handle real-life problems which is the core of online assessment rounds and DSA is the medium to solve problems which forms the core of interviews in case of any software roles.