Americans Are Scarce in Top Programming Contest

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Only four of the 48 best computer programmers in the world are Americans, at least according to a computer-programming competition run by TopCoder. Poland had 11 of the final 48, and Russia had 8. Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes asks whether this is more evidence of a sad decline in American education and competitiveness: 'Surprisingly, the Eastern Europeans don't seem to think so. Poland's Krzysztof Duleba, 22, explained that in countries like his own, there are so few economic opportunities for students that competitions like these are their one chance to participate in the global economy. Some of the Eastern Europeans even seemed slightly embarrassed by their over-representation, saying it isn't evidence of any superior schooling or talent so much as an indicator of how much they have to prove.'"

Comments

Polish politeness.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Some of the Eastern Europeans even seemed slightly embarrassed by their over-representation, saying it isn't evidence of any superior schooling or talent so much as an indicator of how much they have to prove.

Whilst it's true that Russian & Polish IT guys have less opportunities & more to prove, I think they're just being polite saying "it isn't evidence of any superior schooling"

The focus on mathematics in education in Poland (along with Russia and China) is far higher then in the US. The difference in what a typical high school graduate can do between these countries is huge. (I also note that at least 1/2 of the four Americans amongst the top coders began their education in Singapore)

Re:Polish politeness.

[Flaming Babies]

I also note that at least 1/2 of the four Americans amongst the top coders began their education in Singapore

I'm perfectly willing to accept that I missed something while reading...
but where do you see where they began their education?

Po-Shen Loh, 23, a graduate student in math at Princeton University, and his 21-year-old sibling, Po-Ru, now an undergraduate at CalTech. Both were born in the Midwest of parents who had emigrated to the U.S. from Singapore; their father is a professor of statistics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Born in the US. Going to school in the US. Did you get additional information from another article?

According to this article,
the family has lived in Wisconsin since 1982.

Re:Polish politeness.

[Nicolay77]

As a coder (you can't rule out C++ and lisp knowledge) and a mathematician (well, not really graduated, yet) I can say that programming and maths have a lot in common. In fact, math is harder, and after doing some higher maths, you will surely be a better coder. Maths expands your mind.

However, coding has (almost) nothing to do with what is normally seen as maths, it's not like algebra, it's not calculus, and is not linear algebra either (most of the time). In that sense you're totally right. The current emphasis in that math == calculus is, in my mind, just wrong, given current market trends.

I would like to see a more computer science oriented maths curriculum.

Maths are behind everything. Logic is a part of maths. The theory used to manage concurrent programming is, guess what? A mathematical model.

Regular grammars, and by extension, regular expressions are a part of mathematics. Don't tell me you don't use regular expressions in your code. At least, I do.

Most of the maths you need when coding are found in the book Concrete Mathematics by Knuth. And what is found in this book is also very different to what is normally teached as maths.

So, yes, if you know what maths really are (if math teachers knew about programming), coding has a lot to do with mathematics.

programmers in Poland

[Jacek Poplawski]

There are good programmers here in Poland.

But after my studies I had choice:
- stay in my home city and work for awerage wage
- move to western Poland to big city and work for foreign company
- emigrate to another country

I have chosen second option, I moved far away from my home city, but many people just emigrate as fast as they can.

And now there is one more reason to emigrate: terrible political state (PIS, Lepper and Giertych).

Re:My Profession

[molarmass192]

I think that may be a big portion of it. I love to code, I've been doing it since I was 12. However, after putting in 60 hours a week coding at the job that puts food on my table, I find it hard justify entering a contest when I could spend that time getting more coding done. To top it off, I actively contribute to a number of open source projects when I do get some spare cycles. So, on that note, if outsourcing wasn't nipping at our heels, we worked a (gasp) 40 hour work week, got a more than a couple of weeks vacation a year, and my wife didn't have this unintelligible need to spend time with me, I'd be far more likely to enter these types of things for fun.

a comment from Krzysztof Duleba

[Krzysan]

Poland's Krzysztof Duleba, 22, explained that in countries like his own, there are so few economic opportunities for students that competitions like these are their one chance to participate in the global economy.

I don't recall commenting on Polish economy (I have my opinion and in fact I think it's doing quite well).

I said that in Poland we don't have too many *scientific* opportunities and that biology, chemistry, physics etc. are underdeveloped in comparison to maths and CS, so bright students lean towards maths, while in western countries they have wider choice.

I also mentioned our general high competiveness and great job done by the organizers of Polish Olympiad in Informatics and other contests, but those comments didn't make it to the article.

Krzysztof Duleba

Re:My Profession

[HoldenCaulfield]

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.

Re:Great programmers CREATE

[Anonymous Coward]

The developers behind each of the projects he mentioned are not americans. That was the point he was making.