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Google Code Jam 2005 Winners Announced
Ember writes "The results of Google Code Jam are in. The winner is Marek Cygan from Warsaw University. Second prize goes to Erik-Jan Krijgsman from University of twente (Holland) and third to Pyotr Mitritchew from Moscow State University." Registration for the event took place back in July and Google reported a total of 14,500 registrants which is almost twice as many as last year, making for some stiff competition.
Boy, the winner looks happy! Or maybe he's just trying to be humble.
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
Does anyone know if companies like IBM, Microsoft, Sun, SGI (well, maybe not SGI..) and some of the other big names in the computer industry are going to start holding similar competitions?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I guess Google didn't forget Poland.
sigfault. core dumped.
It doesn't surprise me that Google continues to increase Brain Drain in other big IT-focused companies (Microsoft, etc).
Google seems to realize that information is the most valuable commodity now and in the future. While most companies fight to contain their hold of old information, Google invests in new ways to sort and distribute the information others have created.
Programming is the real weapon of the war to produce information and sort it. By enabling programmers to compete, for profit, Google finds a huge new resource: ideas. What will the next information gathering or sorting device be? Hiring 15,000 people would cost millions. Forcing them to compete cost $10k.
Unfortunately, this is counter-productivity for most folk here. 15000 people just worked for free, and Google reaped the short term benefits. It'll be interesting to see how Google utilizes the optimized routines of non-winners, if they're allowed to.
.... was this a contest or a recruitment tool? After all, you get 14,500 people to submit code in a structured contest and you could likely find a few dozen new Google employees in the bunch.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I find that such competitions are generally pretty worthless... like math competitions. The ability to solve problems that, while "complex" , are still solveable in mere hours, is not really indicative of a truly great talent in either field, mathematics or computer programming. It is simply indicative of a great talent of coming up with elegant solutions to very small, localized problems. Fine for the competition, but winning gives little reason that this young man will be any more successful a programmer than any other in the contest.
A feat worthy of congratulations, to be sure, but it has no bearing on the real world - though many, including Google, pretended that it does.
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I would like to know what the winning entries where.
First of all,
Congratulations to the winners.
Now the "scandalous" question, where the entries from US programmers ranked. Last year, the winner was from Argentina, this year from Poland. So, all the talk about US losing the science front could be true.
I don't want to take away from the people who won, or the countries and institutions that are educating them, but I live in USA, and I'm curious, how the contestants from here did.
The US never had a monopoly on education. I mean, don't forget that the earliest modern-style universities were formed in Europe around 1200. Many were operating for around 500 years before the US was even formed. Today many of those institutions have been around twice as long as the United States, let alone the American educational institutions.
And before that there were centres of learning in Arabia, Egypt, Asia and Greece.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Maybe I just me, but I don't see how being able to solve TopCoder-style problems makes you a great programmer. Great programmers write easy-to-understand, supportable code. This competition doesn't encourage that in any way.
Artist: Davis Mac
Song: Oh Lord Its Hard To Be Humble
Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
when you're perfect in every way.
I can't wait to look in the mirror
cause I get better loking each day.
To know me is to love me
I must be a hell of a man.
Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
but I'm doing the best that I can.
I used to have a girlfriend
but she just couldn't compete
with all of these love starved women
who keep clamoring at my feet.
Well I prob'ly could find me another
but I guess they're all in awe of me.
Who cares, I never get lonesome
cause I treasure my own company.
Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
when you're perfect in every way,
I can't wait to look in the mirror
cause I get better looking each day
To know me is to love me
I must be a hell of a man.
Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
but I'm doing the best that I can.
I guess you could say I'm a loner,
a cowboy outlaw tough and proud.
I could have lots of friends if I want to
but then I wouldn't stand out from the crowd.
Some folks say that I'm egotistical.
Hell, I don't even know what that means.
I guess it has something to do with the way that I
fill out my skin tight blue jeans.
Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
when you're perfect in every way,
I can't wait to look in the mirror
cause I get better looking each day
To know me is to love me
I must be a hell of a man.
Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
but I'm doing the best that I can.
We're doing the best that we can
Can someone Google for me the problems they had to solve? I'm not finding it.
Maybe the US contestants outsourced for the challenge.
You're confusing 'driven' and 'smart.' 'Driven' means that coding can make you 10x what your neighbors do and you can live like a king, so you work your tail off to get up in the world through knowing as much as possible about coding.
'Driven' people in the States are going to business school and meeting all the bigwigs' kids instead because you won't be able to pay off your student loans in the American computer industry for fifteen years instead of the five it takes you working in accounting / consulting...
The unbelievably, incredibly, killer-code 'Smart' people in the States are either starting their own small businesses and don't have time for this kind of thing, making enough money that they don't want to take a huge time risk for a possible 10k, self-effacing enough that they don't care, or already working for Google, and therefore ineligible for participation.
My little site.
The second place winner was Erik-Jan Krijgsman, a student at the University of Twente in the Netherlands Is that right before the University of Thirte?
It doesn't matter. Any problem worth solving by the best programmers in the world take more then a couple hours and I'm sure they are paid well for it. TopCoder receives much criticism. It is mostly highschool aged students pushed by their respective schools so the school can get some local press. If anything this just shows that hopefully the really good programmers are off doing better things. Regardless, being able to make a program output a predetermined output given some input (every challenge in this contest is like that because all results are automatically checked) is hardly anything worth bragging about, not saying its a bad thing, it could be useful, but its not going to get a shuttle out of the atmosphere.
Regards,
Steve
The unbelievably, incredibly, killer-code 'Smart' people in the States are either starting their own small businesses and don't have time for this kind of thing, making enough money that they don't want to take a huge time risk for a possible 10k, self-effacing enough that they don't care, or already working for Google, and therefore ineligible for participation.
I think tossing them in two groups, one being as an employee of a specific company, is oversimplifying a bit...
"So, all the talk about US losing the science front could be true."
Yes, because we all know that Google CodeFest is the most accurate determinant of such a thing.
Yea, I thought it was something similar as well. But, what about the top coders in high school or college ? I'm sure the ones that are employed in US or Europe didn't really even attempt. But, what about the college kids, who are shepherded into competitions like this ?
By their schools, or their own egos ?
It strikes me as odd that all three winners are students. I mean, shouldn't an experienced coder be better at this kind of thing?
This summer the company I work for wanted to hire some students for some simple programming job we would like to have done, but didn't have the time to do ourselves. To test if the student could really write some code, I create a small programming exercise, someting quite simple. I tested it on the programmers first, and they all took about 15 to 20 minutes to implement a working solution. The students got an hour to solve the problem, and only one of the about 20 applicants was able to solve the problem within the hour! So... are these student so much better? Or do the "real" programmers not compete in this contest?
I compete in online programming contests. This does not mean I am a great programmer, or that the winner in these contents are. It does mean however, that the winner is familiar with lots of algorithms and when, where and how to use them. This is really what it's all about - applying algorithms you have learned, under pressure.
:)
Almost all of the more famous names in programming contents are the guys who, over the years, have practiced and solved thousands of programming problems such as the ones you can find at ACM and TopCoder. You don't have to be a super genius (if you are, you probably have better things to do) just stick with it. After a few hundred problems, you know how to do it. It's like rubiks cube and playing Quake.
Whether it's geeky, useful, boring, fun or manual labour is what you make of it.
The unbelievably, incredibly, killer-code 'Smart' people in the States are either starting their own small businesses and don't have time for this kind of thing, making enough money that they don't want to take a huge time risk for a possible 10k, self-effacing enough that they don't care, or already working for Google, and therefore ineligible for participation.
How condescending. Those factors apply to other countries too. The USA is not the only country where smart people start businesses. The USA is not the only country where smart people can make money. And believe me, the USA doesn't have a monopoly on self-effacing.
So basically, the excuse you are using for the USA doing poorly is an excuse the other countries could use too, but didn't because they actually did well.
US coders are busy dropping out of colleges & setting up MSFTes & ..u know the rest of the story...
The article caught my eye, I'm always curious about new and upcoming programmers and am a fan of Google. So, what great thing did the winner of this contest produce? Turns out, nothing. He won a contest in coding, which I'm not sure tells anybody much of anything.
It's kind of like a spelling bee. Virtually anyone in the top x% is equally capable in spelling acumen. On any given day, any given playah could, or would be a winner in a spelling bee.
Factors:
I am sure the winner of this programming contest is bright, but I don't think it brings anything much to the programming/computer science world. But then, I guess it doesn't have to.
Congratulations to the winner.
I thought it was pretty funny, but then I didn't vote for bush and I dont have a hannity bumper sticker like parent probably does.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
It is mostly highschool aged students pushed by their respective schools so the school can get some local press.
This guy Cygan is from the Warsaw University, not from a high school. His colleagues from the same departament already won other prizes: ACM IPC and Top Coder 2003.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
In any competition, the winners are probably outliers from any underlying distribution of talent anyway. So you're basing conclusions on a few outliers, big deal. It would be like saying because Tiger Woods is the best golfer, that must mean whites are lacking in golf skills. This is in no way, shape, or form meant to bring race into the picture in a negative way, it was just the first obvious example I could think of.
As has already been pointed out, this is the case where you have to be correct and quick about it. It's sad to see people deride the efforts of those who competed. All in all, it shouldn't be a surprise that Marek won, since the Polish universities have been doing quite well in the TopCoder competitions. It's likely that their professors actively encourage them to compete in TopCoder (especially considering the money), but the fact that they're able to consistently do it effectively is something to note. After all, these are the people who cracked Enigma during the Second World War.
He won! Yeah! A vague press release. This is the internet, least google could do is host the winning projects and post them online..
-
I've noticed a tendency for people to write off programming contests because it's not "really about programming", in so many words. I'd like to point out that these aren't "software development" contests: TopCoder does run those, and they are very different from the algorithm competition (the name the more popular contest goes by).
Do you know why companies are looking to hire the winners of these contests? Is it so they can put tomek or SnapDragon to work chugging out applications? Hardly. Have you ever seen some of the harder problems they have to solve? They are incredibly agile when it comes to algorithm hacking. I've seen these people write probabalistic solutions that passed all the tests by some smart pruning and faith in statistics. That was after solving two other problems, all within a 75-minute time limit. Speed isn't everything, but there is definitely something to be said for someone who can crunch abstractions that quickly.
The simple fact is that a lot of companies would love to have a "brain guy" of that magnitude around, because being able to solve complex algorithmic problems quickly is actually sometimes a desirable trait.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
There were 3 competitors from the US in the top 10 (4th, 5th, and 8th). Also, there were more coders from the US in the finals than from any other country.
I believe that Poland had the second largest contingent. Poland has been doing quite well in programming competitions, as the competitors there get press more like sports players do in the US, which attracts other talented people to the field.
So... it's to be expected that they'll beat us in a coding contest, because their students have been programming for an extra five centuries?
Second, in this year's Google Code Jam, about half the finalists are students (grad or undergrad, though - not high school), and the other half are professional programmers.
What are the odds? Is this because they're better at this sort of thing or do they just have more free time?
Couldn't agree more about education in the Middle East. I just got accepted under a full scholarship to Bin Laden University in Afganistan (or maybe it's Pakistan, can't remember).
Their placement office said that the job market for new hires is exploding. Starting salary is around 72 virgins per year for new graduates. Never heard of that currency but they said the exchange rate is around 10USD = 1 middle east virgin. Not too shabby considering US engineers only start around $40k USD.
You can find the final round questions here.
S/he, like myself, doesn't see what Google has to do with Poland; hence, the OP is entirely un-funny to those of us not "inside" enough to get the joke. The parent asked what it was a reference to, and nobody had the time to answer( though apparently had the time to mark it a troll, which it clearly is not ).
Now you're suggesting Bush is somehow involved in this joke?
Could someone please care to explain?
I should point out that the third-tier upper-division problems (the highest-valued problems) are generally much more involved.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
I just wanted to mention couple of things that might have influenced the recent results of polish programmers. Firstly, quite a few years ago a few people started to train promising young programmers in the art of algorithm design. Note, that they start very early, often in the primary school. These boys (usually) are trained by the best polish lecturers and older colleagues. Later, they often represent Poland in the international contests, with quite some achievements. But it's not only this group. Few years ago Warsaw University started a national programming contest in cooperation with the biggest polish newspaper. The contest takes about a week, and each day new tasks are given. It always starts with fairly easy ones, only later to go into really hard problems. This attracts many young people, that know how to implement e.g. simple sorting but don't really know much about e.g. graph algorithms. Competition in these contests gives these young people opportunity to extend their knowledge, and since it is a recurring event, they learn in the meantime and get better and better. Also, people from countries like Russia and Poland for a long time didn't have access to the modern technology, so instead of playing with machines, they played with theory. And in algorithms, the real problems lie in the design, not in the implementation. Finally, we're smart :)
The US never had a monopoly on education. I mean, don't forget that the earliest modern-style universities were formed in Europe around 1200. Many were operating for around 500 years before the US was even formed.
While this is true it is also irrelevant. For relevant data look at the past 50 years. European higher education is getting worse and worse, in the US it's been getting better and better. There is a reason why the 17 of the top 20 universities in the world are in US.
I'm German and go to a top German university (Working on my PhD) but I've got a Masters from a middle of the range US university and the US university was supperior in so many ways it's not even funny.
This isn't Summer of Code, it's CodeJam. CodeJam is an algorithmic competition, it's much more akin to a track meet than a barn-raising. So there were no "winning projects", only winning solutions. You can read the final round problems, if you'd like.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
It's time for them to start doing this... :)
Simpy
That's a pretty poor joke, as it clearly shows that you know nothing of Middle Eastern history.
... how are you going to efficiently test/judge when you factor in *everything* that makes a great programmer ??
I agree that style and design are very important (vital, in fact), but I think you're short-changing the the winners of this contest as well as the testing mechanism. A great programmer is indeed all of the things you described, but it's much harder/costlier to test those angles in an automated fashion. You can't "spin" metrics such as whether it compiles, lines of code, memory usage, and execution time. As such, you can rely on automation to do your testing. On the other hand, how the hell is a machine going to reliably judge how easy-to-understand or supportable your code is, architecture decisions, how well you comment your code, your coding style etc? Those things are arguably subjective, and computers don't do "subjective" all that well. You could sub-out all the judging with humans, but then you've increased the cost/resources needed by an order of magnitude.
So, yeah, the code jam only measured a few aspects of what makes a great programmer, but it's not a trivial aspect. A good mentor can can smooth out the rough spots of a sharp-witted coder who sucks at documentation and style, but it's much harder (is it possible at all?) to make a dim-witted coder sharp-witted, regardless of style and/or meticulously commented code.
Google for forget Poland and feel lucky. Or go to http://www.youforgotpoland.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_forgot_Poland "You forgot Poland"
Is that like an alphabetic character? (Yes, I know there's more than one meaning of 'digit' but not in data. See the mid-most digit on my hand? ;))
First of all I would like to say that being able to make a program output a predetermined output given some input can be significantly harder than it looks like.
First of all, out of the top 10 on TopCoder, a majority belongs to a university and the rest seems to be to old to be highschool students.
I also don't buy your proposition that the so called "really good programmers" are doing better things. It sound too much like the excuses that PHBs use when they can't understand something. They simply say they are too busy with other things.
I would of course value your opinion more if you took the time to place high in atleast one Division One Single Round Competion at TopCoder or find one of those really good programmers you are talking about and let him do it.
Holland merely was one of the provinces that eventually formed the country now known as The Netherlands. (Indeed, Holland does not exist anymore: it was split up in the provinces North and South Holland somewhere in the nineteenth century.) Thus, saying that Holland equals The Netherlands would be as absurd as saying that California equals the United States of America.
Yet do not be embarassed by this ignorance. Most Dutchmen are not aware of this subtle difference themselves.
Use Scroogle -- it calls google for you so you get google's results but without ads and you stay anonymous! Google is Big Brother, with banner ads, with censorship. GOOGLE IS EVIL. There are many recorded reasons. Hiring all those microsoft employees is only going to make them more evil. http://www.scroogle.org/ // ALF GORE // http://www.newsoftheday.com/algore
the blurb tells the names of the winner(s), but gives no clue as to what their project was.
Thats two *sentences*. Please practice better punctuation / clarity or we will be forced to relegate you to slashdot editor. Bloody proles.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
Solve increasingly difficult algorithmic problems within a set time period? How about write a piece of enterprise software with no requirements, users you've never met, an analyst who can barely check their email, and a project manager thinks unit-tests and documentation are "Version 2" features? Welcome to my hell, college boy!
It's pretty funny because it's an accurate portrayal of the past 500 years or so.
1. either starting their own small businesses and don't have time for this kind of thing,
2. making enough money that they don't want to take a huge time risk for a possible 10k,
3. self-effacing enough that they don't care,
4. or already working for Google
Four groups there. Still too few, you're right. But the argument is really that there's more incentive to do other things than program computers here, not to mention the social pressure away from spending a lot of time inside working on something arcane other people simply don't understand, because it's not QUITE as relatively profitable in a social sense.
My little site.
Well, it's possible you're right, but you'd need to get ratios as to who was competing from where in this contest, and how often they had worked in this type of contest before. For reference on this kind of info, go check out the toplists on TopCoder.
My little site.
Whatever. Go check out the toplist on TopCoder. A shot at $40k / year in contests is an amazing salary in India, Eastern Bloc countries, or China. Here it won't buy you a house in the more populous states. You're wrong.
My little site.
Thanks for the correction, I was thinking of a different high profile coding challenge, my apologies. I still agree with the rest of my post however.
Regards,
Steve
Thanks for the correction, I was thinking of a different high profile coding challenge, my apologies. I still agree with the rest of my post however.
Regards,
Steve
This is stated right on the registration page, "Not only will you be in your glory of coding, but there are prizes for it too! It's more than just $155,000 but a chance to work for the hottest tech company, Google."
Also, Google offered a series of interviews to all the finalists this year.
Sorry, when I wrote that comment, I wrote it with haste and was actually thinking of a different, but similar coding challenge. Regardless, what I was getting at was that in the real world the problems presented in the challenge are non-existant for the most part or non-realistic, so using it to judge the quality of a programmer is useless. Its kind of theory versus reality. In this challenge you need to know theory and have to apply it quickly. Ben Googder, the guy mostly responsible for Firefox, has shown himself to be a great real world coder, but he admits to struggling through some computer science courses at his college. The challenge represents a small set of problems, and they aren't even a very diverse set either. Things like distribution of loads, efficient protocols, speed, memory usage, bandwidth considerations, maintainability, secure code, validating code, etc... are not tested in this challenge. The list could go on quite a bit. Its a fun little challenge, but nothing to place too much merit with. This is why companies like IBM stopped supporting TopCoder, they realized that the coders often didn't pan out in the real world. Google may have more of a use for this kind of coder, I don't know, and I'm not saying that the person who won is a bad coder, I'm just saying that just because someone wins this does not imply that they would be a great programmer to hire for a job. You would still need to look at other factors.
Regards,
Steve
see parent :-)
Google should publish more info about the context. Which languages were used by the champion? Is there a correlation between the language and position in the contest? Without these info, we are missing a great ./ flamefest!
How was the country distribution? Which regions of the world had more people among the 100 best?
Seems like some people here are looking for the projects the did - don't you think you are confusing this with googles 'summer of code' projects? Or am I confused?
- barkholt
Actually, the University of Bologna was founded in 1088; I was an exchange student there on its 900th anniversary. (The *exact* year of founding was unknown, but, IIRC, it was known to be in existence a few years later, with some evidence that it had been in existence a few years.)
While it is the oldest "western" university, by 1200 there were *many* universities, at least in Italy, and, I suspect, elsewhere in Europe as well.
I'd just like to comment on some stuff here that isn't quite right.
Sun, IBM, and many others have sponsored TopCoder competitions in the past. They have since backed off of them.
Sun still do. IBM haven't sponsored one just recently, but all companies can't sponsor every competition, there's a lot of companies trying to get in on it.
The problem with their approach is that it only proves that the coder can think and type fast. It does nothing to address teamwork, cleanliness of code, design capabilities, engineering ability, or many other areas that are critical to a real world programming job.
Actually that's not true at all. TopCoder now has multiple tracks of competition, each focusing on different areas, and they include *every one* of the things you mention.
These contests can be a fun way to compete with your peers, but my guess is that a lot of companies have found that placing too much empahsis on the results is a good way to get burned.
All of the company reps I've talked to are delighted with all of their hires from TopCoder events, with only one exception, out of dozens of coders.
If there's anything at all that these companies might find irritating about TC tournaments, it's that their tournaments are so accurate that 50% of the people who make the finals, and hence are around to be recruited and interviewed, will have already been to one before. But it's worth it to get the top talent, and sponsors rotate around.
I beta tested TopCoder once upon a time (they paid well for a few hours of college student's time). It has all the above problems plus a few not mentioned (limited ability to compile and test, limited access to tools, limited languages, etc).
Yes, that was years ago in beta testing. TC now lets you use whatever tools, compilers, and editors you like. Yes, there's limited languages, but if you're that good, you will know or can easily pick up C++ or Java or one of the other languages they allow. And that old myth of "a Perl coder would kick everyone's ass" doesn't hold up, except for extremely easy text-processing problems.
1)The problems aren't real world. They're heavily algorithmic, and generally a google search can find you pseudocode. The competitions are generally won by whomever knows the algorithm already.
The easier problems might use a standard algorithm as PART of the code, but googling for psuedocode doesn't help if you can't implement it damned fast. For the hard problems, you usually have to come up with something totally new and tailored for the problem. That's where the real test is.
2)Their code frequently requires heavy knowledge of the standard library for that language. If you don't know the StringTokenizer class in Java or wierd STL calls in C++, don't bother. Perhaps not an issue for everyone, but I learned C++ before templates existed, and never really liked the STL.
This isn't true either. StringTokenizer sure is useful, but if you don't know it, you'll just have to code it yourself, and it isn't hard. "weird STL calls" certainly aren't needed, but you might need to use and return vectors or strings.
This implies that writing hard-to-read code is actually a survival trait, since if your bugs are hard to find and the submitted test cases don't find the bug, you have a better chance of winning your room.
If your code *does* contain a bug, you're going to lose so many points that you won't win anyway, so this doesn't help you.
The ability to solve problems that, while "complex" , are still solveable in mere hours, is not really indicative of a truly great talent in either field, mathematics or computer programming
Some of these problems wouldn't be solvable in "mere hours" at all by ordinary programmers. It could take them days, and even then you may have a bug-ridden or inefficient solution.
The top programmers in these competitions aren't just slightly faster, they're *orders of magni
It proves again that we are the best coders.
It must be small University, because I couldn't find it.
In which state this city is? I found a Warsaw, Indiana. It must be Indiana University then.
Great job, I always knew that M.I.T was overstated.
I really can't grasp why the /. crowd got to be so dismissive of contests like this. May it be just envy? "Hey, just 'cause the guy won that doesn't make him that good!"
Look, it' an algorithmics competition - like ACM's, like the IOI. And no, it's not that much about these guys being some kind of walking algorithms encyclopedias. It's not about knowing how many different ways are there to sort an array. It's much more about devising, at contest-time, a new dynamic-programing algorithm to solve a certain problem. Or, who knows, about applying sorting algorithms to something that doesn't really seem to require sorting. But maybe you think algorithms suck. Well, these organizations (the ACM, for instance) sure don't - and Google doesn't either.
It's really amusing that so many of you people say the problems "aren't real world". For you guys, all that seems to matter is stuff like team work, modularity, design, engineering - and CodeJam sure won't test that. But let me tell you people something: you're software engineers and I'm sorry for you (no pun intended, but do flame away). Your work is about working on previously solved problems, now on a huge scale. You end up managing huge teams and large code bases, but tell me: is there anything really new, like innovative and requiring radical approaches, in company's X business model (once you've worked for Y and Z)?
It's not up to me to say this, but I hardly think you (as in the standard software engineer) are the ones Google is looking for with this competition. For Google, as they say, there are still a number of unsolved problems in computing, "There's still so much for us to dream and do". For short, Google's "real world" is way different from yours.
But perhaps you think they initially outlined and prototyped the PageRank system with great design, beautifully commented code, and a huge team. I'd say your wrong, and they used a number of hacks and "awful" code. They just had a that great idea - and that's Google's "real world"
Now, don't get me wrong, there is place for you guys at Google too. The systems have to eventually get into production - and all engineering techniques are _great_ then. It's just that the usual (however good) software engineer can be hired by Google from just about everywhere. People with great ideas, however, and the skills to find and solve new problems, just can't.
That's what those 3 guys are all about. And they sure still have to go through all the usual interviews and stuff.
There were no Americans either.
It's worth pointing out that a significant number of the best US competitive programmers already work at Google. Myself included, along with many of my co-workers.
:)
You see less of a US force at the Google Code Jam simply because Google's already hired them.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Dang it all!
But are they celebrating in Kentucky or Illinois ?
.
- aqk
F U
Microsoft holds the yearly Imagine Cup, which has had thousands of participants who program all kinds of .NET projects. Each year, a set of Student Ambassadors to Microsoft are involved in promoting this competition and getting HS/college students interested in real-world programming projects which they continue to own and could potentially sell after demonstrating them to MS and INETA members. I was one such SA, and was priveleged to know others who were knowledgeable and motivated, but it was a constant battle because the Imagine Cup was poorly timed (because we all know MS is never late) both years I promoted it and didn't jive well with college Senior Design projects. Of all the SAs (in past years anyway), I know of very few who had offers and accepted them at MS, while others like my friend Gayle were more prominant in that they left MS for Google (Seattle Times) and had good reasons for it. I'm also definitely not working for Microsoft, and I can safely say we all saw MS to be massive and unwieldy with the coveted VS.NET devs hidden behind scores of contractors and PR people and PowerPoint Slides.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
From this link, it seems safe to bet that Google is certainly looking to hire codejam participants. (notice left menu choices)
r ecruiting&time=30000&page=1&docid=-861816699953283 9788&urlcreated=1119908428&chan=Uploaded&prog=Goog le+Recruiting+Video&date=Mon+Jun+6+2005+at+8%3A07+ PM+PDT
c e_google_scraper/
http://www.google.com/codejam/
Although, after watching this video, it seems that unless your female, your chances are less than favorable. (wait for the google logo at the end)
http://video.google.com/videopreviewbig?q=google+
Anyone here on Slashdot work for Google now or in the past?
I'd like to get some testimonial.
Also, out of curiosity, what other sites exist like this?
www.scroogle.org
The Register has this interesting story: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/11/open_sour
That's a pretty poor joke, as it clearly shows that you know nothing of Middle Eastern history.
Do you know what a joke is?
Sorry to be a nitpick but Greece is part of Europe you know...
the competitors there get press more like sports players do in the US
Oh yeah, seriously. And the riotous fanbase much like UK football teams. When Google was about to announce the winners, we had 1000% increase in police presence in every major city to suppress their devastating, hopped-on-php, caffeine-enhanced rage. We're talking tear-gas, flying cobblestones and burning cars here.
I think perhaps you haven't fully grasped the nuances of the word "could."