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.

No time to post right now...

[TomatoMan]

...American Idol is on.

I win

[saboola]

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

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.

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.