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?"

Comments

This is what recruiting has come to?

[chris_mahan]

Is this what corporate recruiting has come to? A love-fest?

As the artist forerly known as Prince, and now known as prince again would say: "Party like it's 1999". (dot com ref for the dense)

OO-Centric

[pkhuong]

quoth http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=help&d 2=codingWindow

"TopCoder currently allows coders to utilize Java, C++, C#, or Visual Basic .Net as a competition programming language."

"Your solution will essentially be a class that contains at least one method - as defined in the problem statement. "

From this we learn that good programmers only use Algol-like languages (In fact, C-like) or VB, and all use OO.

Re:OO-Centric

[HappyKleenexDude]

Classes don't make a program object-oriented. You could write your entire program in the class's single method, and it certainly wouldn't be OO. As for the languages, well, it's pretty standard. The ACM ICPC and IOI also both heavily restrict language usage to these languages or fewer (although I think you can use PASCAL if you really want). Perhaps the idea is that 'good programmers' aren't language dependant, and can carry over their skills to at least one of those languages.

Re:OO-Centric

[hsoft]

I was about to register there when I bumped into the language list. Too bad they don't have pascal (MS sponsored, I should have known...). I know that I should be able to write in one of these language, but people using one of these language as their main language will always have a considerable advantage over me (Except for VB coders, of course, who are inherently bad coders ;) ).

I prefer the way ICFP does. It was my first try this year, and I liked it. Too bad my brother and I made bad design choices at the start, we couldn't make any useable ant AI on time... I have a great (delphi) ant simulator though...

Re:OO-Centric

[Anonymous Coward]

The ICFP doesn't require you to use any specific programming language.

Er, and the IFCP does not require source to be immediately uploaded to their servers, compiled using their software, and tested using their test programs. They have to restrict the languages to do that. Deal with it. It's not some secret plot to push OO solutions. The class is required only for symmetry with languages like Java that require methods to be contained inside classes.

Wow... expired certificates and all...

[Vaginal Discharge]

You'd expect that TopCoder would have uptodate security certificate. But apparently, when I'm trying to download the applet, I saw that their certificate expired in January. So I'm just supposed to trust them huh?

From what I've seen and heard, the problems are not terribly complex, but instead they make you do them as fast as possible. How does this make people better coders? I'd rather spend a week on a really challenging problem, than to spend 30 seconds and write as many for-loops as possible.