Have Code, Will Compete

Pre-event Talk

Transcript

1. Have Code, Will Compete Have Code, Will Compete The Rise of Code Competitions By Paul Pajo SMARTDevNet Developer Evangelist, SMART
2. Competitive Programming Competitive Programming § is a mind sport usually held over the internet or a local network, involving participants trying to program according to provided specifications. Competitive programming is recognized and supported by several multinational software and internet companies, such asGoogle,[ Facebook[ and IBM. As of January 2012 there are several organizations who host programming competitions on a regular basis. competitions on a regular basis. § A programming competition generally involves the host presenting a set of logical or mathematical problems to the contestants (who can vary in number from tens to several thousands), and contestants are required to write computer programs capable of solving each problem. Judging is based mostly upon number of problems solved and time spent for writing successful solutions, but may also include other factors (quality of output produced, execution time, program size etc.) § http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_programming
3. Some Popular Competitions Some Popular Competitions § IOI § ACM-ICPC § Google Code Jam § Facebook Hacker Cup § CodeForces § Top Coder
4. Some more …. Some more …. § AI Challenge § Australian Informatics Olympiad § BAPC § Bitwise IIT Kharagpur § British Informatics Olympiad § Canadian Computing Competition § Central European Olympiad § Hong Kong Olympiad in Informatics § HP Code Wars § ICFP Programming Contest § Indian Computing Olympiad § International Obfuscated C Code Contest § Internet Problem Solving Contest § Robocode § Roboforge § RoboWar § SOFTEC § South African Computer Olympiad § SPOJ § Supercomputing Challenge § Syrian Olympiad in § Central European Olympiad in Informatics § Cloudball § Code golf § The Code Room § Codecraft § Competitive programming § Core War § The Daily WTF § Electric Jungle § FastCode § Google Code-In § Gridwars § Java 4K Game Programming Contest § Les Trophées du Libre § Multi-Agent Programming Contest § National Olympiad in Informatics, China § National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences § Obfuscated Perl Contest § Perl Golf Apocalypse § Rails Rumble § Syrian Olympiad in Informatics § Turkish Informatics Olympiad § Underhanded C Contest § United States of America Computing Olympiad § UVaOnline Judge § Woburn Challenge
5. Local Version Local Version § DevCon C-Cup & mini C-Cups § WebGeek DevCup § Freelancer.com Manila Dev Challenge § HTML5 DevDay § ??? § Profit? § If you love basketball, dream FIBA § If you love coding, dream IOI?
6. Who are the heroes? Who are the heroes? § Petr Mitrichev? § Gennady Korotkevich?
7. Petr PetrMitrichev Mitrichev § Russian sport programmer who won multiple major international competitions. § His accomplishments include gold (2000, 2002) and silver (2001) medals in the IOI, gold medals (2003, 2005) in the ACM ICPC World Finals as part of the team of Moscow State University and winning Google Code Jam (2006), theTopCoder Open (2006[2]), the TopCoder Collegiate Challenge (2006,2007), Facebook Hacker Cup (2011,[2013) as well as Challenge (2006,2007), Facebook Hacker Cup (2011,[2013) as well as numerous national and online contests. § He has achieved the highest rating ever among the Algorithm competitors of TopCoder.comand consistently ranks in the top two of the world, currently being the world leader as of April 10, 2013. § He is also the third highest rated coder in the competitive programming website Codeforces.com as of April 10, 2013. He currently works at Google, where he is a maintainer of the search engineand helps to prepare Code Jam. § See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Mitrichev
8. Gennady Gennady Korotkevich Korotkevich § a Belarusian sport programmer who has won multiple major international competitions. § His accomplishments include gold 6 consecutive times from 2007 to 2012 , silver before that in 2006 in the IOIand world champion (2013) in the ACM ICPCWorld Finals as part of the team of Saint Petersburg State University of Information team of Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Opticsas well as numerous national and International contests. § He is currently the highest rated at Codeforcesand the highest rated Algorithm competitor atTopCoder as of August 8, 2013. § See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Korotkevich
9. Petr Petron on Gena Gena § What feels so good about Gena is that he doesn't seem to lose the rest of his life to programming contest training, at least according to the above interview. He reminds me of myself, but of course on a greater scale. While I'm sure he's training a lot, it's important that becoming a world-class master does not affect the other aspects of his life badly. § Gennady, if you're reading this, I challenge you for a game of soccer or table tennis :) § More generally, I think this example supports the idea that the skillset (or maybe talent? that's probably a question for a separate discussion) that the programming challenges require is unique and is only partially related to CS or mathematical higher education. And seeing how many big companies are valuing that skillset in job interviews, it mathematical higher education. And seeing how many big companies are valuing that skillset in job interviews, it seems important enough for education of future software engineers to maybe borrow something from the algorithm contests. § Another possible direction, of course, is that algorithm contest puzzles were just lucky to get into the limelight, and will just go away (or maybe become a pure sport) at some point when the big companies and universities discover a better way to educate and recognize the future engineers. Somewhat like Formula 1 which is becoming less and less important for the development of normal cars. § http://petr-mitrichev.blogspot.com/2009/10/gennady-korotkevich.html
10. Gena Genaresponds responds § Yes, this is Gena) It's a very interesting comparison between sport programming and Formula 1. This is almost completely true. But, this is only a game, sometimes paid. This is very useful for the first time, but then it This is very useful for the first time, but then it becomes into writing of templates, typing. § http://petr- mitrichev.blogspot.com/2009/10/gennady- korotkevich.html
11. Q: Q: § Should we have more of ths? J § @pageman @smartdevnet § http://facebook.com/groups/smartdevnet