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Google Code Jam Registration Opens Today
Bamfarooni writes "Registration for Google Code Jam 2006 opens today.
The event consists of 3 online rounds (September 5-6, September 14
and September 19,) in which participants compete to solve three
coding problems faster and more accurately than their competitors.
If you've got what it takes, and more of it than anyone else,
then you can take home up to $10k for your code-fu."
This is Google's way of recruiting the debuggers to sort out the problems with their programs.
Hmm, the difference between cost and value again. Beads for the natives mate...
Deleted
Does Google claim ownership over the code you submit?
Ellidi
Hey c'mon! VB.NET and no Perl?
That does the programming? In a few years, a bot will clean up this type of thing much like a forklift cleans up at a weightlifting competition.
Is that a sequal to Space Jam?
perhaps you should ask google first? Terms and conditions here
Or at least poorly written. Want a chance at $165,000? Here's how: Google Code Jam 2006. This competition is a chance for you to use your skills and compete against top programmers from all over the world. Thats on the registration page. On the main page it's slightly different, first prize 10k, 2-10 5k and so on until it all adds up to the suggested 165k. True, it all adds up, but if you wanted to enter and were given a link only to the registration page it can be quite misleading.
The worst part of this is you have to use their IDE. Which means no auto-completion, no color coding, no help, etc. As someone who relies on that kind of lookup stuff daily for their work, I can't see how any normal professional will do well in that environment. However, I can see how a college student who has to memorize all of the code/functions because they are tested on it and required to write code in class will have an easier time with the contest.
I wonder if they consider it cheating to write your code in another window and paste it into their window to test.
... if they included some previous questions with their previous results. That way, you could know what these people had done in order to win the prizes they won. Would be much more interesting than a table with apparently meaningless numbers in it.
to delete the record of every google search ever submitted. evar. especially the ones about "how to heal bacne".
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
If I come up with a kick-ass idea for my employer, I'll stand to benefit much more than simply $10,000.
:D
I guess if you are job-less, this is a cool way to get some credentials of a sort.
Otherwise, it is pretty lame. BOFH never felt the need to prove his skills
Blar.
Hey, if you include Ruby with it's blocks, you need to include Smalltalk to. Yes. Fraud! We still need: Javascript, Ruby, PHP, AWK, Fortran, Perl, Lisp, Prolog, Bash and Smalltalk. (I'm still busy learning the last)
the thing is, the topcoder infrastructure supports certain languages and it costs them $$$ to implement additional ones. When there is a payoff to adding Ruby, I'm certain they will add it.
Using Python is problematic anyway as they state that due to slow runtime of python, some problems won't be solvable. They will time out. I expect this would apply to Ruby also. And I would hate to invest the time to solve something in Python/Ruby only to find out that it won't run, then have to port it.
On the other hand, if the productivity claims of Python/Ruby are true, then a more fair contest might weight time to complete the problem vs. runtime. E.g. if you implement a correct solution quickly, then you get more runtime to test. Something like that.
Both elegant AND practical. Would love to see that here.
Malbolge would clean up at a competition like this. But if they required it they would have to call it the "Google Brain Jam".
I don't get the addition of VB.NET, except if it was a matter of "Well, TopCoder had it available". Even Microsoft doesn't want to believe it exists.
:)
Maybe I'm just irritated that Perl isn't an option. Then again, we'd know what language made it.
- oZ
// i am here.
Nice of them to schedule it after DragonCon, another geek-fest, Sept 1-4, 2006. http://www.dragoncon.org/
This will be the first year that Python will be allowed along side the traditional TopCoder languages (Java, C++, C#, and VB). I think it will be very interesting to see how Python, which more often than not get can get more done with less code and less time, will compare to the heavier languages like C#, C++, and Java. I wonder if Guido working at Google had anything to do with it?
The qualification round coincides with my first week of classes :(
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
No C? WTF?
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
Wow, I come up with kick-ass ideas that lead to a shorter project time--and I get let go sooner! Where do you work???
This is exactly the info I was looking for :)
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
That analogy is already true in trivial cases like tic-tac-toe. The simple minimax algorithm (invented by Dr. Min Irving Max) will be a perfect player "on it's own".
Roozbeh is the one who got me thinking about this, about how this fun worldwide code contest is marred by a no thank you to those countries on their hands and knees to the US elite. On the news you'd think all Iranians are screaming bloodythirsty people in the dark ages, these restrictions help people forget that there are normal hackers like anyone like Roozbeh, I guess they want to dehumanize and alienate us from Iranians so it will be easier to go to war with them. I guess with policies like this, the US government is trying to keep Iranians in the dark ages. Then there's Cuba, the only country in Latin America not on its hands and knees to the US (although Venezuela has not been so over the last few years either). I'm not religious but it reminds me of Daniel 3:4-6 "To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages, that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up: and whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace."
Why not assembly code? Binary?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
seems to be some discrepancies in the timeline?!? http://code.google.com/soc/studentfaq.html#timelin e
Beware of the Leopard.
Erm. . . C++ is a superset of C. Thus C programs are also valid C++ programs.
Yup, this C (header) works great when compiled by a C++ compiler :)
:)
typedef int protected;
protected private(int public, char *protected);
void class(void);
and so on
My other car is first.
You better ask, but remember the last round is onsite, and any "questionable" methods may disqualify you. No point in wasting all that round one and two time just to be kicked out.
No Morse? WTF?
Crap. Saw the terms on another link which stated it a bit differently... And missed the other post.
Nothing to see here...
Where is LOGO?! That turtle is a mean problem solver.
TURTLE GOTO ANSWER
And that's it!
Does anyone else prefer http://developers.developers.developers.developers .slashdot.org/ over http://developers.slashdot.org?
You're a fool. C++ can can compile C code!
Then why the hell are you using those reserved C++ keywords in your headers in the first place?
C++, unlike Objective-C, is not a true superset of C.
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
It's a real pity you have to be at least 18 to enter the Championship round. I have a friend who finished in the top 10 in Qualifying last year, but he was only 16 so he wasn't allowed to take part in the Championship round.
No it can't. C++ is not a superset of C.
Try running:
void main() {
int class;
}
through a C++ compiler.
Nah. It's more for publicity than recruiting. Look at the venue. Those in the US that want to go to NYC are already there. Those overseas will have trouble with customs, given that they are 1) foreign, and 2) good at hacking code. It would have been smarter to choose Toronto or Vancouver, where it would be safer and easier for the contestants to travel.
I can see several reasons why it's to Google's, the contest's, and the contestants' advantage to have the final elimination round take place at the same phsycial location, but NYC is so 20th century.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I think a more glaring omission is that there is not a single language that could be considered being of the functional language family - or even if you'd count Python as one (I definitely wouldn't), no statically typed functional languages. But I guess the "you need to be able to read other people's code" explains that partially.
Anybody knows where we can find the previous problem set (and preferrably *with* the test data). Before topcoder was bought by google it used to make this stuff available.
You say that like it is a bad thing. I'd rather keep my well-paid job than get a measly $10,000 and 'recognition'.
I get money for rising to challenges, money for patents filed, money for new ideas. Of course it helps keep me away from the killing floor when job-cuts come arround, but I've survived 11 years...I'm doing pretty well.
This is the Republican America, where 9-5 is a dream. Just accept that you need to work a little harder than most countries...in order to benefit from a richer life-style than most countries, and you will understand.
Blar.
Using Python is problematic anyway as they state that due to slow runtime of python, some problems won't be solvable.
Yet they offer Java as an alternative? I know, I know. Java can outperform C on certain microbenchmarks. But we're talking about more real-world applications here. And frankly, from everything I've seen, Java just doesn't cut it.
At the labs I work IT at, we use Python, Java, and Fortran for various tasks. We recently transitioned some of our groupware frontends from Java-based solutions to one written in Python. While we did it initially for maintainability, what we found was that the Python software offered the same functionality, but was far quicker and far more memory-efficient than the Java-based software we were using before. We were actually able to decrease the number of servers we were using, switching some of our production servers to backup servers.
I have also talked in the past to some of the scientists who have started using Python for some of their numerical work. While they admit it can't get anywhere near Fortran when it comes to raw performance, they do admit that it makes their code far quicker to write, and much easier to debug. One particularly interesting piece of simulation software I was told about was originally written in Fortran, but transitioned to Java in order to take advantage OO techniques. The performance was extremely terrible, and a rewrite was thus done in Python. I don't recall the exact number, but I remember them saying that the Python implementation was 15 times faster than the Java one, but itself only three times slower than the simulator written in Fortran.
So from my experiences, a Python program is often far quicker (and less memory-intensive) than a Java equivalent. For them to suggest for this contest taht Python is unusable for some tests because of its speed, well, I think they are mistaken. My point is further backed up when they offer Java as an alternative.
Good thinking !== Fast thinking
He's just pointing out that C++ is not a true superset of C, even though it is for most practical purposes.
Interesting how the AC parent was modded redundant, but the same message the next day by a registered user was modded informative.
I would imagine google is looking for ways that are faster than their current methods (hence the runtime limits) and not necessarily interested in how long it took to code it. This way they get to see many different insights into how the problem can be looked at.
Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
Thanks for linking to the problem, which turned out to be very fun to solve. If you want to see my solution, which I wrote in Haskell, I posted it here: Solving the Google Code Jam "countPaths" problem in Haskell. Thanks again for the link.
Cheers,
Tom
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.