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.

[uradu]

> I think they're just being polite saying "it isn't evidence of any superior schooling"

While it is true that Eastern Europeans are masters of understatement and self-deprecation, I don't think that's the whole story. There is a much stronger culture of high-profile competition in the East than in the West, probably because of a long tradition amongst old communist regimes to foster scientific competition. Kind of like the national spelling bee competition in the US, over there much more emphasis was placed on math competitions. Mind you, pretty much the same kinds of people sneered at them as do over here.

OTOH I really don't think there is that much difference between the science curriculums of the East and the West, with the singular exception of the US. I experienced three high school systems (Eastern Europe, Germany, Australia), and the only significant difference I could see was in the timing--Eastern Europe tends to drop a lot of the heavy science sh!t on unsuspecting students way too early, such as grades 5 and 6 and in general adopts a dog-eat-dog attitude towards the students, while in the West they tend to stage that later on during the senior years and also seem more concerned with not letting students fall off this speeding bus. Australia was the most pronounced in that respect, with the bulk of the advanced science and math being left for the last two years of high school. But at the end of high school I think most Western school systems have imparted about the same amoung of science and math as in the East.

Re:Polish politeness.

[mdarksbane]

I worked with a high school student who had recently moved from Romania to the US. I found his impressions of the US school system very interesting.

The first thing he said was that school was a lot easier here. But he immediately followed with the fact that he didn't think that his old school taught him anything more, or more advanced. Just that they took a much more adversarial approach with the students.

He said that getting a C was expected, and that you could at any time be expected to stand up in front of the class and explain any part of the subject matter, and be admonished if you could not. Pop tests were a common occurance. He said that you studied like mad just to avoid looking like an idiot.

Whereas, in his American school, you had to slack off to get bad grades, and you never had a test without a week's notice. But although easier, the same material was covered in the same detail.

Just thought it was interesting. In the US, you really aren't forced to learn any discipline, it's up to you to decide to care about it, whereas that doesn't seem to be a real option in eastern countries.

Re:Polish politeness.

[malekith]

I live in Poland. I know personally some people from the Top Coder list. I even took part in the regional ACM contest some time ago (without much success, like 30th place in Central Europe).

I guess most of the Polish contenders in Top Coder were students. Which means they are under 25, which in turn means they were in high school in late 90s and hardware wasn't a big issue here back then. OK, I was programming Atari 800 when I was 7 years old, but I guess it doesn't change much ;-)

My experience in such contests was that it wasn't at all about 2x speedup, so converting from C to assembly doesn't buy you anything. You need the right algorithm, you need to implement it fast and make no mistakes.

I guess there are several things that need to be done to win such a contest. You need a high profile algorithm classes (read: a lot of math). You need to be bright. You need some luck. But the most important thing is: you need a lot of training. Warsaw University have special classes that prepare students for such contests. Wroclaw University also does, but on slightly smaller scale. We have a national programming contest for high schools. Winners mostly (I guess 80% of them) go to Warsaw. This all can be seen in Top Coder results.

I guess this was also about the ,,we need to beat the Russia'' thing. And some people from Wroclaw joined Top Coder because ,,we need to match Warsaw''... So there is something about the high profile competition tradition in Central and Eastern Europe.

It is not the case, where people who are doing great in such contest are unemployed, and have nothing to do except to start in Top Coder. You can get relatively high paying job as a programmer in Poland, especially given much lower costs of living here, than in US or Western Europe. This is all despite the high unemployment in other areas. It takes a week or so to find a job as a programmer in Wroclaw. There are lots of R&D divisions of big foreign and Polish companies here. So they really need not impress US employees to get H1B.

And no, we don't have polar bears on the streets.

Land of the Free Market

[Mindwarp]

That's because all the best American programmers refuse to work without a pay-check. Capitalism at work, Ladies and Gentlemen! ;-)

Note for the humor impaired - it's a joke, OK?

Re:Land of the Free Market

[Opportunist]

Yeah, but what if the Czechs bounce?

No time to post right now...

[TomatoMan]

...American Idol is on.

I win

[saboola]

10 PRINT "HOME"
20 PRINT "SWEET"
30 GOTO 10
RUN

Re:I win

[ceeam]

10 PRINT "DUDE" ' Corrected
20 PRINT "SWEET"
30 GOTO 10
RUN

US Education Standards

[CowboyBob500]

One of my professors did an exchange year at an Ivy League university, and when they got there they had to send back to the UK for their A Level (pre-university qualification) notes as the students were not at the level that they expected.

Also, I had a friend who was on the student exchange program at the same University at the same time. She was a pretty average C grade student (I'm sure she won't mind me describing her like that), but in her year in the US she got straight As.

I don't know if the standard of education is going down in the US, but it apparantly was nowhere near the standard that my professor and friend expected.

Bob

Re:US Education Standards

[antifoidulus]

Anecdotes, Anecdotes, Anecdotes. Well, first and foremost, grade inflation is rampant in the Ivy leagues. Their undergrad education system is starting to look like Japan's: IE you work your ass off to get in, but once you are in you are set.
Secondly, I have had the opposite experience with supposedly "brilliant" Indians and Chinese who graduated from these wonderfully elite universities who couldn't tell their ass from a whole in the ground when it came to real computer science. What does this say? Nothing really. Just personal experiences, not statistically significant.

Re:US Education Standards

[CowboyBob500]

And if you their methodology for reaching their conclusions you'll see that it's all about research grants, papers published, Nobel Prizes of faculty etc etc, and absolutely nothing to do with the quality of education being offered to undergraduates. In fact, the number of Nobel Prizes held by faculty makes up for a total of 20% of the score, and I'd argue that this indicator for example, is utterly irrelevant.

Bob

More like a macro contest

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I have seen, these contests are more who can write the coolest macros for simple but commonly used tasks, and primarily involve creating quick hacks to get things coded faster.

Maintainability and good engineering are rarely tested. It is just who can create quick and dirty implementations for a given task. There is a lot of skill involved, but not the sort of skill that most enterprises would want.

If there was a coding competition that involved developing robust, scalable architectures for enterprise applications, and designing software to best meet the needs of a client, then we would see who had the best software engineers.

Not so much about education or ability

[VorlonFog]

I believe it's more how American corporations have dumbed down everything so there's fewer opportunities to excel while gainfully employed. When's the last time your employer recognized someone with real talent? The only people I ever see on these annual awards are butt-kissers.

I agree...

[d3ik]

I would tend to agree with Mr. Duleba. I don't think this reflects on the intelligence of American programmers, it reflects on our work schedules. I'm 22 just like Mr. Duleba, and I would love to enter contests like this just for the fun of it... I just don't have the time.

I'm gainfully employed building financial systems and whatever other contracts I'm working on. As Mr. Duleba was saying, I think it reflects more the economic state of some of the Eastern European countries. There is a lot of talent, but not a lot of opportunity. A little publicity from a contest like this can make you more viable to employers and give you an edge on the competition.

Great programmers CREATE

[MickMac]

The great programmers in this world are those who have demonstrated their abilities by actually designing and implementing great software. Coding the solution in a competition proves nothing. You don't have to look any further than the GNU, Linux, Apache, KDE, Gnome etc. etc. CVS logs and mailing lists to find the real greats! As a European I say that the US can hold its head up high on this front.

Re:My Profession

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

"Oh well. I don't think I would need to study for this competition, in college I never studied for a computer science exam. It was my theory that if I couldn't deduce the problem on the fly, then I shouldn't be coding at all. Coding isn't about regurgitation or memorization, it's about how you instinctively attack a problem."

And then forgetting all about how you did it, so you can solve the same problem in the same short-sighted way infinitely in the years to come. Way to go, cowboy!

"New Europe" inferiority complex?

[otis wildflower]

Gosh, I hope not. What with their 21st century tax mechanisms, high literacy and technology adoption, I think the Baltics, Poland, and much of the rest of Eastern Europe are leapfrogging Central and Western Europe. Why would you open a new business anywhere in Europe outside the east or Ireland? Folks in France, the UK or Germany are not _that_ much better (nor are Americans, to be honest), and any skills you can't find locally just acquire them via fiber optics and conference cams... I wonder if the tax schemes of Croatia are nice and flat, Dubrovnik would be a _great_ place to live and work I'd think...

Better yet, they can take part in Euroland while remaining far more attractive for business investment (and, thus, jobs).

Wouldn't the ironing be delicious if "East Germany" were to secede again, but this time in order to go 21st-century capitalist (flat tax, low corporate tax) and join the Eastern European economy?

Luckily they can still remember the true face of socialism, and what havoc it can wreak, though perhaps in a couple of generations they too will transform into ignorant ingrates...

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).

the best American students don't go into science

[Cosmo the Cat]

Science and technology is just give lip service here in America. We don't value science and tech geeks here. You want to earn some real money? Don't wast your time in science - go study law.

Re:My Profession

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, when you win a contest and you apologize, you're humble. When you didn't enter a contest and play down the results, you are arrogant.

no kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely spot on.

Why can't Americans just realize that, taking away first-world advantages and throwing them into situations dependent upon meritocracy, that they really are just average?

Instead, first post that says, "Oh, we didn't do that well because we don't want to come across as ubergeeks etc. etc." gets modded up. Meanwhile, you can bet some radically different rationalization would be at work if Americans had placed a much higher number. American Exceptionalism sure is ridiculous.

The American Ego

[flithm]

Why should there be more top American programmers in the world?

USA counts for about 4.6 percent of the world population. (300 million out of 6.5 billion). 4 out of 48 is actually almost double of what could be expected based on numbers alone.

America isn't known for its outstanding education system. So again I pose my question: why SHOULD there be more American programmers, and why are the results a surprise?

The only thing that surprises me about it is that there weren't fewer than 4 of the 48 who were American.

I'd like to stress that I'm not trying to be anti-American or anything... just realistic. If you want to change the numbers, you've gotta look at the truth of the matter, and make decisions from there.

Look at what the Russia and the European countries are doing right instead. It's curious to note their humble attitude toward their over-representation.

Re:My Profession

[Kombat]

Why waste concentration on memorization when you have instant access to all your past work right at your fingertips?

Why limit yourself to only consulting your own past solutions when there are decades of well-documented research into innovative, ingenius, and non-intuitive solutions that smarter people (Kernigan, Ritchie, Knuth, Torvalds, Tanenbaum, etc.) have already figured out and written out for you to learn? I think that was the parent poster's point.

It's stupid to ignore the wealth of knowledge and experience already learned the hard way because you discard it as merely "memorizing." It's not. If you study the problem and learn why the solution works, you've just made yourself into a better coder. I didn't "memorize" how Huffman Encoding works. I learned why it works, and I probably wouldn't have figured it out on my own. But it's one of the tools I can use now, because I understand it. I learned it.

It's arrogant, ignorant, and shortsighted to believe you can just "teach yourself" and "figure out" perfect solutions to all the potential programming problems you'll encounter, while ignoring all the work done (and published) by the computer science and mathematical luminaries that preceded you.

Re:My Profession

[Kombat]

I don't think I would need to study for this competition, in college I never studied for a computer science exam.

Nor an English exam, apparently.

It was my theory that if I couldn't deduce the problem on the fly, then I shouldn't be coding at all.

Deducing problems is easy. Deducing the solutions, however, is much harder. And believing you can do it without the benefit of the pioneers that came before you is arrogant and closed-minded. It's not about "memorizing" the work of Knuth, Tanenbaum, Stroustrup, etc., but rather learning why their solutions work. I didn't "memorize" that 2^5=32. It just does. I understand it.

Coding isn't about regurgitation or memorization, it's about how you instinctively attack a problem.

And university is about learning the best practices and tactics that have been discovered and published by those who came before you, and learning how to apply those techniques to problem-solve. Its not about "instinctively" attacking a problem, but rather using the research and study that came before you to improve those instincts. Widening your horizon. Expanding your toolbox.

Certain courses can't make you memorize stuff to be a better coder but they can give you a bag of tricks or arsenol with which to attack problems.

Yes, and those are the things you should be studying. But you claimed you never studied for a computer science exam. Now you're contradicting yourself, but you still sound arrogant.

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.