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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."
So for a long term employment (3+ years), I would rather hire a young successful TopCoder participant (one can always gain experience but not smarts) than a regular but experienced guy.
I'd agree, but I also wouldn't expect the TopCoder to stick around at a job for 3 years. Unless it was a very challenging job (Like game development, or scientific research in their area of interest.)
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
TopCoder permits only Java, C++, and C#.
-- a red
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
You now know matrix and vector arithmetic, not linear algebra. Can you explain how a vector normal computation relates to an operator's spectrum? Linear algebra is not about matrices and vectors but rather the mathematical structure they follow. Vectors are a nice, simple example. Another example is the continuous real functions on a compact set. Another is real functions whose measure obey certain properties. These all behave similarly, and that is linear algebra.
David went to my highschool, Upper Canada College (Canadian version of Exeter/Eton), and he was a couple grades below me.
:) i.e. No girlfriends. Maybe university has changed him now, I dunno.
Sadly, he had the misfortune to be at the school while the Canadian High School Math champion was there so he didn't get much glory in the math department.
He is a smart dude, but was incredibly socially inept
Anyways, he wrote a complete 3d FPS game in ~ grade 10 . He also crushed everyone in the Waterloo CS contests.
There seems to be a lot of life left in that corpse, given that Perl and Python have essentially become Lisp (lexical closures, dynamic typing, list comprehensions, etc.) and that O'CAML is thriving.
Actually, you're right, these problems weren't that hard. In fact, three of the four finalists finished all the problems in about 40 minutes.
There was actually a problem (a switch died, then the backup switch died) during the final round and they had to cancel the match. The question here are actually a second batch of problems.
The hard problem from the first back was a get the animals across the river problem. Given a set of up to 16 animals and what animals can't be placed on a boat together, find the minimum number of trips it takes to get all the animals across the river. Oh yeah, the animals also have weights and if the weight of the animals on the boat exceeds a certain threashold, you can't transport them.