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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."
programming 3D rendering engine. that is where all the action is. i learned more about linear algebra while writting 3D rendering libraries, then i did during the course of my degree. :)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I find it interesting that a math double-major, who's considering becoming a math professor, uses C++ as his language of choice, with Java coming second. Not Lisp, not Scheme, not Haskell - C++.
I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from that fact, I just find it interesting.
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
It really depends on how you define "action". Encryption seems to me to be even more exciting a field. It isn't as glamorous as game programming, but the math involved is amazingly interesting (advanced number theory, primality), and good encryption tends to last for longer than good game engines.
3D rendering is not entirely about math (probably a lot more to do with studying the brain and how people generally interpret images that they see). Encryption however is ALL math. Anyhow, that's my 2 cents.
Yup. There wasn't a challenge. I did them for awhile. When they used to pay for all competitions, I learned it was better to stay in the bottom ranks. There you could take a room on one question, the easiest because all you needed were language tricks. When it was just Java, this basically meant that you learned all of java.util and java.lang packages. Basically my strategy boiled down to this:
1. Read the easy question.
2. Recall the Java class/method that shortcutted the problem.
3. Write 3-5 lines of code (not including the class and method header).
4. Score near max points and be done before everyone else and sit for the rest of the round.
5. Challenge round, slam the people that tried to finish as fast as you. Chances are these people made a mistake and if you knew the problem, you knew what to look for right away.
Most of the time I'd also just open the last two questions so I knew what to expect if someone did finish them, but the bulk of the people in the lower rooms would never even get to finish them in the allotted time, if they did, you could almost always count on it being wrong. So long as I didn't answer the big questions and let my scores inflate, I never moved out of those rooms and I never saw a point in it. The only point I saw in getting to the higher rooms was to make the invitational. Yeah I'd love to win $100,000 but at 1 in 64 kids (back a year and a half), my odds weren't that good anyway even if I thought I was talented enough to win (which I know I'm not).
This is not real world coding and I would NOT encourage colleges to become involved in Topcoder because most of their philosophies go directly against what professors are trying to instill in up and coming programmers. You are not encouraged to design, comment, test or even read the problem thoroughly in these competitions because it all costs you valuable points. Whether or not these are valuable skills in the real world, I'm still growing up and learning.
well after 69 comments (hehe), there has not been a SINGLE one discussing the competition problems, all three of which are quite interesting.
/. lowers productivity. making people spending way too much brain power on stuff that's completely unrelated and time consuming. heck; i might lose sleep over this.
especially the hard one, probably, because my mind is drawing a blank on how to have it implemented... (no i didn't cheat and look at the solution).
heh, actually they go like this:
*easy* - okay, i can think of a algorithm. probably not the fastest thing in the world, but it should work out.
*medium* - have a haze of an idea on what an algorithm might look like. with enough caffine it MIGHT solidify.
*hard* - at least I understand the problem, but curses on the restrictions of a binary tree =)... no idea on algorithm that would finish executing before the end of the universe. (granted, only 50 elements, so maybe it's possible brute-force)
Damn; this is exactly how
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