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We ROCK @ programming -> https://community.topcoder.com... for such a tiny nation especially!

* :)

(... now, go "eat your words", trolling weasel...)

APK

P.S.=> You wish you were me... apk

Isn't this pretty much what topcoder already does?

Without having read the actual PDF (naturally), the description basically matches the competitive software component marketplace that topcoder provides. And, yes, like other commenters have mentioned, it seems like a Mechanical Turk style race to the bottom. Thankfully their component model seems a litte broken to me, so, perhaps that's why it hadn't taken over the industry.

For me programming challenges were my way to get a foot in the door without a degree. I remember getting interviews from Google after their first Code Jam. And facebook after I solved a bunch of programming puzzles they released. But topcoder was my real salvation from my parent's basement.

Even though I have a career now, I find solving them lots of fun. Sometimes I come to the solutions when I'm drowsy before bed and have to get up and write it down before I forget!

Project Euler

UVa Online Judge

Kaggle

TopCoder

The software, which can be downloaded for free...

The software is actually located at this address: http://www.topcoder.com/astero...

Top coder has an asteriod challenge that is open right now : http://www.topcoder.com/astero.... They're trying to track asteriods and also identify false-positives and ignore them.

I agree, that's really dumb. I really wanted that $35k, and I believe I could have a good crack at it, but with this structure I'm just not interested any more.

And, http://www.topcoder.com/astero... is not available at the moment. I guess it's been slashdotted.

They've been running contests in this area on TopCoder since January: http://community.topcoder.com/longcontest/stats/?module=ViewOverview&rd=15024

You could try your hand at various programming competitions such as those offered on TopCoder or Kaggle. Some of the prizes in these competitions amount to serious dough.

Alternatively, you could try algorithmic trading. Several online brokerages offer an API, such as Interactive Brokers and TradeStation.

The source codes of the winners are here:
http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/OpenSource/SequenceAlignment

Frankly, $6k is a lot of money for the amount of effort (less than 22 hours of work in average).

especially in mathematics

YES!! It seems like there is a secret cabal of mathematicians who try to make anything even partially math-related as dense as possible.

Take, for instance, Wikipedia's article on Grundy Numbers. It looks like there's some good technical stuff there, but what's lacking is a less technical walkthru for an educated general audience. Contrast with this page, which takes a little while to get there but is MUCH more accessible.

Our "tiny female brains" can cope with the actual work *just fine*. :)

I'm from Missouri

I'm also very interested in programming games. So far I haven't found any that are exactly what I want, but there are some enjoyable ones.

I used to do programming contests in college, while I enjoyed these I always felt like I wasn't learning enough. They're designed so that you'd need a very good team and lots of outside training. It isn't nearly as much fun outside of real (or even practice) competition, but you can find big banks of problems and an online judge if you want to play along. TopCoder is similar and much easier to participate in, but again its focus is on competition, not education (though maybe that's changed?).

The closest I've seen in video games are those by Zachtronics Industries, they all deal in some way with engineering design. SpaceChem in particular is quite programming-like (as explored here) and has a great difficulty progression. Kohctpyktop is an integrated circuit design puzzle with a strong test driven development bent, though if I hadn't already studied EE it would probably be prohibitively difficult.

There's also pleasingfungus' Manufactoria, which has a lot of CS (stack machine) stuff in it and a great sense of progression.

A lot of these attempts tend to be directed at kids; the old Rocky's Boots was one of the first steps in this direction, with logic gates and simple circuits. I didn't find it very good, but ToonTalk is an ambitious visual programming environment and game-like tutorial rooted in SmallTalk semantics.

Cort Stratton wrote a post in September called The Games Programmers Play, which covers this topic well. The comments here on Slashdot and on Gamasutra suggest some more such games.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about designing "games for learning programming", I've written somewhat more extensively about it on my blog. I hope you find some of these suggestions interesting, sorry for the linkstorm.

Get involved in some of the competitions here: http://community.topcoder.com/tc

Start with old competitions to practice on. Even if you never actually compete in any of the real time competitions, you can have a lot of fun with these type of problems and competing against former coders (it scores you based on several criteria). More importantly, this is ideal stuff to buff up your interview skills. If you get good at the topcoder problems, you'll do great in any interview coding.

For my programming team practice in college, we used http://www.spoj.pl and http://www.topcoder.com

They are, see TopCoder

I did participate in one of their projects once for the practice with the language, but it was just too top-heavy to achieve proper quality - really difficult to communicate that the design needed changing to fulfil their requirements. And of course, not winning the payout sucks when you've put so much effort into it, even if you were doing it just for the practice it stings somewhat.

Many points to consider:
-Do you have professional experience programming?
This can be gained through internships, FOSS development, and competitive programming.

Do you have resume fodder?
-Certifications
-Degrees
-Project Successes

Do you have references?
-Professional connections through school.
-People who have reputations in software-development.

Honestly, those are all solid ways to develop the credentials to get you into entry-level, and if you are motivated, well-spoken, and honest, it can be done. But sometimes you have to just bite the bullet and do some intern work for free, or some beta-testing before those connections can be made.

I think java is the best because it has good IDE (eclipse, netbeans etc...) . Good IDE may help you learn the language quickly write code fast. Btw, top ten in topcoder, 8 use C++ and 2 use java :) http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank

Two basic things.

1) Your resume needs to get you an interview. This is easy if you're applying for an internship position at a school which MS actively recruits from. Not many secrets here. Try to engage a college recruiter in person at your school. Show an interest! Tell them about a project you've done outside of class. Tell them about that club you're an exec on (even if it is the nerdy math club or pot-smoking surfer's club!). Make yourself out to be well rounded and keen! That will get you an interview.

2) Interview skills! You need to ace the questions you're given. An interview for an internship is pretty short, less than an hour. Spend the first couple years of your CS degree doing http://topcoder.com/ competitions in your free time, ace your two or three algorithms/data-structures courses, and spend a day or two reviewing those same courses before an interview. Think of it as a programming competition. An internship question won't get into anything beyond those classes with the technical questions. If you have a friend who has ever taken any interview training, get him to run you through all the "so tell me about yourself" warmup questions half-a-dozen times. Learn to reference your past projects and experience while answering questions. Even if you know your shit (broadly speaking), if you're not prepared for the interview, you can only really blame yourself. If you've been focusing for the last year on your honor's thesis, review that 1st/2nd year material until you can teach it. You'll thank me :)

As a former participant at such contests, here are some sites that helped me along the way:
- Study Introduction to Algorithms, now at third edition: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11866 (This is one of the best books in the field and one I personally read, that's why I'm recommending it. There are of course other books that I don't know of.)
- Check out courses for computer science from different universities: http://academicearth.org/
- USACO has a training path witch gives you problems to solve and increase in difficulty as you go along
- Competition sites like topcoder.com also have educational content beside the weekly algorithmic contests: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=tutorials&d2=alg_index

And most importantly, solve lots and lots of problems. Beside USACO and topcoder, here are some ACM like online judges:
- http://uva.onlinejudge.org/ (some are easy, others are easy if you get the idea and some of the last ones are hard)
- http://www.spoj.pl/ (most are hard!)

Bonus: If you're romanian, you should really check http://infoarena.ro/ It's the biggest online community in computer science with articles, problems, helpful guys.

Hope this helps!

It would be far more interesting if a 14-year-old won an international contest whose participants included college students studying CS at an advanced level :)

He *has* done this before. He was the top individual in this year's IPSC, which is open to everyone. He's also had an excellent record recently in TopCoder, which is also open to everyone: he's currently ranked 14th and is by far the youngest in the top 50. Unfortunately all of the major open international contests are restricted to those 18 and older.

It would be far more interesting if a 14-year-old won an international contest whose participants included college students studying CS at an advanced level :)

He *has* done this before. He was the top individual in this year's IPSC, which is open to everyone. He's also had an excellent record recently in TopCoder, which is also open to everyone: he's currently ranked 14th and is by far the youngest in the top 50. Unfortunately all of the major open international contests are restricted to those 18 and older.

You were only at the top at the time where other countries doesn't have much participation yet. Just look at the current rankings, I'm sure many of them are not jobless or low-paying. Some of them are even Googlers like you. They are that passionate about it that they don't quit.

Also, look at the results of the ACM ICPC. For the past decade, where the participation from other countries boomed, the champions were either from Russia, Poland, or China. Note that the skills being compared here are theoretical computer science and math (and not software engineering, usability, etc.), and competitions like these show that they are really ahead in these areas. For general programming that involves software engineering, usability, etc., I think the US is still at the top.

Sure, you can speculate for reasons, but that doesn't prove anything. Actual competition results, at least, prove something. You don't need to look for reasons/excuses of how the US lags behind these countries, and just accept it. Instead, look at it as a wake-up call that the US are already being overtaken in these areas.

http://www.alice.org/ I heard about this almost a year ago in a talk by Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon University, but haven't had time to check it out. It is supposed to make the learning experience of programming better. Also maybe if you have some first programs written a bit of competition could do no harm: http://www.topcoder.com/ The series of Head First books from O'Reilly also made a favourable impression on me.

You're correct in that people don't generally choose C++ based on performance. But it does happen that non-C++ coders will switch for certain problems.

As an example, As here is Kawigi (a fairly high level competitor who usually uses Java), switching to C++ so he can brute-force a problem instead of using DP.

Notwithstanding that, all TopCoder problems (well, all correct ones) have a Java solution that runs in under 1 second - as that's the requirement on the reference solution. Where you'll see switches to C++ is to make other approaches feasible.

http://www.topcoder.com/tc They are pretty good at finding superstars and matching them to employers.

But if you want to hire these superstars, be prepared to compete with the likes of Google, who do both of the above. They have hired better than 1/2 of the programming contest superstars that I have met.

Let me anticipate a strawman response: the tasks posed in programming contests do not represent the sort of tasks that grunt industrial programmers are called on to do. They do select winners.

This is most likely the result of the AOL XMPP Gateway project posted in 2006 at TopCoder: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=dev&d2=assembly&d3=det_aolXmppGateway

I'm not surprised at all.
If you beleive that IQ is a good measure of intelligence, and is especially important in competitions such as this, and if you believe that research that the average IQ of Indians is way below the average of the top nations, then it shouldnt' be a surprise at all.
So even with over a billion people, it is still too difficult to find enough people with high intelligence to compete countries like Russia, Poland, and China?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_ Nations
And if you think this is an isolated incident, check out these results as well
http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=country_avg_rating

Google Code Jam allows Java, C++, C#, VB.NET and .

TopCoder Inc. offers a ton of money each week for design and development competitions. Non-US citizenship is alright, and they could care less about your background, as it is all competition based. It takes awhile to get used to what is required for both the design and development competitions, but the possibility of making quite a bit of money, without needing a "real" job might be preferential. It will also force you to learn quality software development methodologies quickly, to be competitive.

TopCoder Inc. offers a ton of money each week for design and development competitions. Non-US citizenship is alright, and they could care less about your background, as it is all competition based. It takes awhile to get used to what is required for both the design and development competitions, but the possibility of making quite a bit of money, without needing a "real" job might be preferential. It will also force you to learn quality software development methodologies quickly, to be competitive.

*NOTE: All submissions have a maximum of 2 seconds of runtime per test case. This limit is used in harder problems to force submissions to be of a certain complexity. Because of the inherent speed differences between Python and the other offered languages is large, some problems may require extra optimization or not be solvable using the Python language.

Your link is to Google's Summer of Code. The Code Jam terms do not say Iranians are ineligible, just unable to recieve t-shirts, money, etc. Here's the terms for the Code Jam.

Here is a list of 10 problems used in the google code jam india. This was found with with google query google code jam 250 (250 stands for the point value of the easy problem).

You can practice on similiar problems in the same environment in the topcoder testing arena. Register for topcoder here. Referrer rrenaud.

Here is a list of 10 problems used in the google code jam india. This was found with with google query google code jam 250 (250 stands for the point value of the easy problem).

You can practice on similiar problems in the same environment in the topcoder testing arena. Register for topcoder here. Referrer rrenaud.

If you want to practice for the Google Code Jam, you can do ordinary topcoder single round matches. Topcoder runs the contest and uses the same technology to host the Google Code Jam as their ordinary matches. You can register for topcoder here. Referrer rrenaud ;). The next two topcoder matches are next Saturday at noon EST, and Thursday, August 24th at 11 am EST.

If you want to practice for the Google Code Jam, you can do ordinary topcoder single round matches. Topcoder runs the contest and uses the same technology to host the Google Code Jam as their ordinary matches. You can register for topcoder here. Referrer rrenaud ;). The next two topcoder matches are next Saturday at noon EST, and Thursday, August 24th at 11 am EST.

perhaps you should ask google first? Terms and conditions here

In what way is this new? There's the ACM ICPC for students, TopCoder, and the Google Code Jam, which have been around for years!

Am I missing something about this competition?

I, for one, would recommend TopCoder: http://www.topcoder.com/ . I am a member (blue-rated), and it's an interesting place; half devoted to algorithm competitions, where you have short timed problems to complete, and half to software development. All of it involves money in some way, either as prize or compensation: I suggest you check it out.

I got into this profession to build systems that solved problems and made people more efficient, leaving them time to do recreational things. So what if everyone can solve some arbitrary problem 20 seconds faster than myself? The job isn't all about coding, hell it isn't even 50% about coding.

Agreed. But the coding-speed based algorithm contests are the least important part of the Topcoder competitions. The marathon contests allow tackling similar problems to the algorithm contests without focusing so much on raw speed.

More interesting to those who want to compete in real software engineering are the the design competitions, development competitions and software assembly competitions. The top earners focus on these (especially the design competitions). The development process is more rigorous that at many (most?) professional development shops. See https://software.topcoder.com/catalog/c_showroom.j sp for a list of competition-developed components, and check out the quality and consistency of the specifications and documentation.

For an overview of the topcoder development process see the sequence of videos at http://software.topcoder.com/ . I found it quite impressive. It pays less than a regular job, but it gives real experience in the whole gamut of proper real-world software engineering practices, and for those who want to demonstrate their skills to employers or who just enjoy challenging competition on real-world problems, I think Topcoder is unique.

For a list of top design competitors and links to their statistics see: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=ComponentRecordb ook&c=most_wins&type=design

I got into this profession to build systems that solved problems and made people more efficient, leaving them time to do recreational things. So what if everyone can solve some arbitrary problem 20 seconds faster than myself? The job isn't all about coding, hell it isn't even 50% about coding.

Agreed. But the coding-speed based algorithm contests are the least important part of the Topcoder competitions. The marathon contests allow tackling similar problems to the algorithm contests without focusing so much on raw speed.

More interesting to those who want to compete in real software engineering are the the design competitions, development competitions and software assembly competitions. The top earners focus on these (especially the design competitions). The development process is more rigorous that at many (most?) professional development shops. See https://software.topcoder.com/catalog/c_showroom.j sp for a list of competition-developed components, and check out the quality and consistency of the specifications and documentation.

For an overview of the topcoder development process see the sequence of videos at http://software.topcoder.com/ . I found it quite impressive. It pays less than a regular job, but it gives real experience in the whole gamut of proper real-world software engineering practices, and for those who want to demonstrate their skills to employers or who just enjoy challenging competition on real-world problems, I think Topcoder is unique.

For a list of top design competitors and links to their statistics see: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=ComponentRecordb ook&c=most_wins&type=design

I got into this profession to build systems that solved problems and made people more efficient, leaving them time to do recreational things. So what if everyone can solve some arbitrary problem 20 seconds faster than myself? The job isn't all about coding, hell it isn't even 50% about coding.

Agreed. But the coding-speed based algorithm contests are the least important part of the Topcoder competitions. The marathon contests allow tackling similar problems to the algorithm contests without focusing so much on raw speed.

More interesting to those who want to compete in real software engineering are the the design competitions, development competitions and software assembly competitions. The top earners focus on these (especially the design competitions). The development process is more rigorous that at many (most?) professional development shops. See https://software.topcoder.com/catalog/c_showroom.j sp for a list of competition-developed components, and check out the quality and consistency of the specifications and documentation.

For an overview of the topcoder development process see the sequence of videos at http://software.topcoder.com/ . I found it quite impressive. It pays less than a regular job, but it gives real experience in the whole gamut of proper real-world software engineering practices, and for those who want to demonstrate their skills to employers or who just enjoy challenging competition on real-world problems, I think Topcoder is unique.

For a list of top design competitors and links to their statistics see: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=ComponentRecordb ook&c=most_wins&type=design

Here are India's stats on topCoder

Rank Country #people Score

15 India 931 1856.04

I'm not sure how the score is calculated, but apparently Indians aren't any better than Americans
and that hasn't stopped them from persuing Information technology futures.

3 United States 987 2492.30

source http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=country_avg_rating/

Here are India's stats on topCoder Rank Country #people Score 15 India 931 1856.04 I'm not sure how the score is calculated, but apparently Indians aren't any better than Americans and that hasn't stopped them from persuing Information technology futures. 3 United States 987 2492.30 source http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=country_avg_rating/

Once again, contest results are announced and people want to over-generalize in one of two directions: either that a country's entire prowess rests on the competition results, or that the results show nothing at all about anything [with the subtext that If I wanted to I could win but I have better things to do].

TopCoder, unlike ACM, actually claims to identify the best coder. What a load of crap. TopCoder is a sport, like ACM, like soccer, or anything else. I sometimes watch hockey. I've even played it. I would never claim that I could be in the Olympics if I wanted to. I could not be in the Olympics or the NHL no matter hard I tried, and that probably has relation to the fact that I don't want to be.

First, if you look at the long-term TopCoder country rankings, they show the US third after Poland and Russia:

    http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=country_avg_rating

Poland is exceptional given its size; they have a very strong contest culture. Canada is also exceptional, currently fourth, followed by China.

If you look at the top schools you'll see two Polish, two Russian, two Chinese and two Canadian schools in the top ten, with Canadian and Polish teams taking slots 11 and 12.

Why is this? Partly culture. TopCoder has a thriving on-line community and is, like any other sport, more popular in some countries than others. I think that secondary school education has something to do with it, too. University/college education is less of a factor.

In any event, the United States for its population ranks just fine at TopCoder. And at the IOI. At the ACM contest, not so well ...

Just to touch upon a few of your points.

Studying doesn't really help with TopCoder - it's a timed, algorithms contest. You have to be able to implement solutions to three problems (easy, medium, and hard), that are then peer-reviewed, before being tested, in a relatively small time window (90 minutes I think?). Think the ACM contest, but shorter time, and no teams . . .

The hard problem from this year's final was:

We want to build a new phone network between numPoints points. A number of possible cables is available to construct the network. Each of the cables connects two of the points and has an associated quality and cost. We want to select a number of these cables such that:

1) All the points are connected to each other, either directly or via other points.

and

2) The quality/cost ratio (i.e., the sum of the qualities divided by the sum of the costs) is as high as possible.

What is the best achievable ratio? If it is impossible to connect all the points, return -1.

The available cables are described by a String[] cables. Each element of cables consists of four integers separated by single spaces. The first two integers describe the two points connected by the cable. The third integer describes the quality of the cable and the fourth integer describes its cost.

Solution and discussion for this and the other two problems are here.

To get to the finals, you have to qualify through a series of online matches. Only 48 advanced to the onsite competition, so holding it the same weekend as DefCon wouldn't help . . .

As for the bit about prizes, there's a significant purse ($20k was the top prize.) And you wouldn't spend money to get to the finals - if you qualify, they pay up to $1,500 per participant in travel costs, provide accomodations, etc. A few years ago, they even paid for a guest to accompany you. I'm not sure if they've figured something out, but in past years, the foreigners had to play for charity as TopCoder couldn't legal give them the purse.

(And you can do rather well in the algorithmic ones without resorting to C macros, there are some C++ coders who don't, and also plenty of folks who are rated high while using Java.)

Those short Topcoder contests have similar problems. The person who has the most revelant "toolbelt" and is most practiced with their "tools", that is, the person with the bigger, better organized encyclopedia of ready made solutions is going to win. This is not necessarily the person with the greater insight and inventiveness. The winners will have coded up some common stuff beforehand, found some other stuff online, and organized themselves so they can find what they need quickly and adapt it with a minimum of time and effort. Nothing wrong with that; there's nothing holy about reinventing the wheel other than you might be infringing copyright if you don't. The contest is a good measure of resourcefulness and preparedness, and not such a good measure of general knowledge of CS, insight, and ability to innovate.

I too am an independent learner. Although I have taken several language courses at my local college, I have found them to be limited at best. One thing you might consider is starting a project on sourceforge for something simple. Do you find yourself doing an repetitive tasks that you could write something to automate? Do you have anyone that needs some web development that you could use Ruby on Rails for? There is also TopCoder. They have a lot of coding competitions that you can participate in - many have cash prizes. Although I don't have the links handy, there are also some sites that have student programming project suggestions that you could look at.