Slashdot Mirror
Domain: topcoder.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to topcoder.com.
Stories · 15
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NASA Wants Your Help Hunting For Asteroids
An anonymous reader writes about new NASA software that can help you become an asteroid hunter. "Since the early 20th century, astronomers have relied on the same technique to detect asteroids — they take images of a section in the sky and look for star-like objects that move between frames. However, with an increase in sensitivity of ground-based telescopes, it has become increasingly difficult for astronomers to sift through the massive pile of data and verify every single detection. In order to increase the frequency of asteroid detection, including of those bodies that could be potential threats to our planet, NASA has released new software, developed in collaboration with Planetary Resources, Inc., capable of running on any standard PC. The software, which can be downloaded for free, will accept images from a telescope and run an algorithm on them to determine celestial bodies that are moving in a manner consistent with an asteroid." -
Larry Page and Sergey Brin Are Lousy Coders
theodp writes "Don't tell Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson about Santa and the Easter Bunny just yet. He's still reeling after learning that Larry Page and Sergy Brin are actually pretty lousy coders. That's according to I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59, a book about the company's startup days by Douglas Edwards. 'I didn't trust Larry and Sergey as coders,' Google engineering boss Craig Silverstein recalls in the book. 'I had to deal with their legacy code from the Stanford days and it had a lot of problems. They're research coders: more interested in writing code that works than code that's maintainable.' But don't cry for Larry and Sergey, Argentina — even if the pair won't be taking home any Top Coder prizes, they can at least take solace in their combined $50+ billion fortune. And, according to Woz, they certainly could have kicked Steve Jobs' butt in a coding contest!" -
Crowdsourced Coders Take On Immunology Big Data
ewenc writes "Mercenary computer coders are helping scientists cope with the deluge of data pouring out of research labs. A contest to write software to analyze immune-system genes garnered more than 100 entries, including many that vastly outperformed existing programs. The US$6,000 contest was launched by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School, both in Boston, Massachusetts. TopCoder.com, a community of more than 400,000 coders who compete in programming competitions, hosted the contest. The results are described in a letter published this week in Nature Biotechnology." -
China Dominates In NSA-Backed Coding Contest
The Narrative Fallacy writes "With about 4,200 people participating in a US National Security Agency-supported international competition on everything from writing algorithms to designing components, 20 of the 70 finalists were from China, 10 from Russia, and 2 from the US. China's showing in the finals was helped by its large number of entrants, 894. India followed at 705, but none of its programmers was a finalist. Russia had 380 participants; the United States, 234; Poland, 214; Egypt, 145; and Ukraine, 128. Participants in the TopCoder Open was open to anyone, from student to professional; the contest proceeded through rounds of elimination that finished this month in Las Vegas. Rob Hughes, president and COO of TopCoder, says the strong finish by programmers from China, Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere is indicative of the importance those countries put on mathematics and science education. 'We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there.'" -
Americans Are Scarce in Top Programming Contest
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Only four of the 48 best computer programmers in the world are Americans, at least according to a computer-programming competition run by TopCoder. Poland had 11 of the final 48, and Russia had 8. Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes asks whether this is more evidence of a sad decline in American education and competitiveness: 'Surprisingly, the Eastern Europeans don't seem to think so. Poland's Krzysztof Duleba, 22, explained that in countries like his own, there are so few economic opportunities for students that competitions like these are their one chance to participate in the global economy. Some of the Eastern Europeans even seemed slightly embarrassed by their over-representation, saying it isn't evidence of any superior schooling or talent so much as an indicator of how much they have to prove.'" -
Google Code Jam 2004
cymen writes "Google's Code Jam 2004 is open for registration at TopCoder.com. Slashdot reported on the 2003 winner and Google has a Code Jam 2003 summary. Grab some caffeine and get hacking!" -
TopCoder Open 2004 Programming Tournament
TAG writes "TopCoder just announced rules for this year annual international programming tournament. The 2004 TopCoder Open, Sponsored by Microsoft will set as rivals some of the IT industry's top professionals and international collegiate coders. Software will be designed and developed. Seemingly unsolvable algorithmic problems will be solved. $150,000 will be awarded over the course of 14 weeks. 24 of the world's best programmers will be invited to compete live at the onsite finals in Santa Clara, CA, USA. This competition is 'Free'. Yep. Free as beer. Everybody over the age of 18 is eligible. So? What is your TopCoder rating today?" -
TopCoder Open 2004 Programming Tournament
TAG writes "TopCoder just announced rules for this year annual international programming tournament. The 2004 TopCoder Open, Sponsored by Microsoft will set as rivals some of the IT industry's top professionals and international collegiate coders. Software will be designed and developed. Seemingly unsolvable algorithmic problems will be solved. $150,000 will be awarded over the course of 14 weeks. 24 of the world's best programmers will be invited to compete live at the onsite finals in Santa Clara, CA, USA. This competition is 'Free'. Yep. Free as beer. Everybody over the age of 18 is eligible. So? What is your TopCoder rating today?" -
Google Code Jam 2003 Announced
An anonymous reader says "O'Reilly Developer News is reporting details of the newest Google programming contest, Google Code Jam 2003. Prizes range from t-shirts to ten grand and you can use any programming language you want to solve the increasingly challenging problems." Update by J : ... as long as it's Java, C++, C# or VB.NET. -
ICFP 2003 Programming Contest Results
An anonymous reader writes "The previously reported ICFP Contest has been over for quite some time. The results were announced on August 26, 2003 at the conference in Uppsala, Sweden, yet the contest organizers have yet to publish results. Despite the forgetfulness of the organizers, it is known that this year C++ did well, taking first and second, but not judge's prize. Interestingly, a one-man team consisting of an undergraduate student took first place, followed by a team of highly ranked 'red' TopCoders, with the maintainers of Gwydion Dylan taking judge's prize." -
TopCoder, Math, and Game Programming
reiners writes "DevX.com has an interesting interview with David Arthur (dgarthur), the 2003 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge winner. Arthur discusses many interesting topics: the similarities between TopCoder problems and math problems, why TopCoder performance is positively correlated with 'real-life' programming performance, and why game programming is where the action is." -
Programming Contests - Worthwhile for Real Life?
Ustaad asks: "We are running some sort of a club in our University which has members who are interested in programming and related stuff. With many sites like TopCoder and Valladolid Online Judge providing heavy machinery practice equipments to programmers, the level of competition in programming contests like ACM ICPC have gone really high. However, we are finding it really difficult to motivate new entries to join our club. There are few key questions that we face from our members. Firstly, how important are these programming contest techniques for solving the real-world industrial problems? Secondly, Do employers really care about the achievements in programming contests while recruiting? And thirdly, what other advantages does one gain by venturing into these contests?" -
16 Collegiate Programmers Left in TopCoder Contest
Allen Reitz writes: "Sixteen of the top collegiate programmers in the country are left to compete in the 2002 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge. The semi-final and final rounds will take place at MIT on April 19-20, 2002 where all 16 contestants vie for the $100,000 prize. Four regional finalists and 12 'wild cards' make up the final 16 out of 512 that were selected to compete. The four regional finalists include: Ben Wilhelm, Oberlin College; Trayton Otto Georgia Institute of Technology; Tom Sirgedas, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Dan Adkins, University of California-Berkeley. Other schools that are sending contestants include: Cal. Tech, Stanford, Univ. of Minn., Virginia Tech, MIT, Michigan Tech, Purdue and the University of Central Florida. If you live in the Boston area and are interested in viewing a programming competition, feel free to stop by the University Park Hotel at MIT on April 19th or view the finals on April 20." -
16 Collegiate Programmers Left in TopCoder Contest
Allen Reitz writes: "Sixteen of the top collegiate programmers in the country are left to compete in the 2002 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge. The semi-final and final rounds will take place at MIT on April 19-20, 2002 where all 16 contestants vie for the $100,000 prize. Four regional finalists and 12 'wild cards' make up the final 16 out of 512 that were selected to compete. The four regional finalists include: Ben Wilhelm, Oberlin College; Trayton Otto Georgia Institute of Technology; Tom Sirgedas, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Dan Adkins, University of California-Berkeley. Other schools that are sending contestants include: Cal. Tech, Stanford, Univ. of Minn., Virginia Tech, MIT, Michigan Tech, Purdue and the University of Central Florida. If you live in the Boston area and are interested in viewing a programming competition, feel free to stop by the University Park Hotel at MIT on April 19th or view the finals on April 20." -
King of the Stack!
meadowsd123 inputs: "Check out this site that is holding coding competitions online and in select cities. Seems like there is some decent money to be won if you're good and know Java." If you have some time on your hands, and feel that you can compete for potential monetary prizes (and possible employment) then it might not be a bad idea. Are there any users of TopCoder online who would care to comment about it?