What is Digg?27 Comments
- meatago, on 10/12/2007, -7/+38In Soviet Russia, the program codes you!
- fletchowns, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28Yeah, I don't really give a ***** about how many countries and what prizes went where, why can't they talk about the actual CONTENT of the competition and not the superficial ***** details nobody cares about?
- Sonizel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15anyone know what the challenge was?
- RadiatedAnt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Damn! those russians and their code cracking enginuity
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12RadiatedAnt
it comes second nature to them because they obfuscated their spoken language. - EochaidRiata, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Here are some examples from the winner of the 2003 competition.
http://www.unstruct.org/?p=183
"I will here briefly describe the last two problems in the final – both are fairly easy to describe and simple enough to understand.
* Given a polynomial with degree at most 20, having integer coefficients, determine it’s largest real root.
Although looking very mathematical, the problem actually has an extremely neat recursive solution, based on finding the roots to a new polynomial with one degree less than the original and doing binary search between these roots. I was the fastest to successfully solve this problem, taking about 20 minutes from opening the problem to submitting a working solution. This turned out to be the decisive factor in the contest, as no one successfully solved the hardest problem.
The third and last problem was the most interesting one, but extremely hard to solve in just 30-35 minutes, which was about what I had left after solving the first two problems.
* Given a positive integer n (n is at most 1000), determine the least number of key presses required to produce a string of n identical characters (say, the letter ‘A’) in a single line text editor. Allowed keys are: ‘A’, Left, Right, Home, End, Copy, Paste plus the possibility to select text by holding down Shift.
Only three people ended up submitting a solution to this problem, and after the challenge phase, my solution was the only one still not challenged. I had some hopes that it was correct, but when during the prize ceremony the first thing they said was that no one had solved the last problem, I thought my winning chances were gone. At that time, I didn’t know that some people who I then thought were ahead of me had failed their second problem in the system test, so I was astonished and amazed when I was announced the winner – but of course very happy." - drawkbox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8You can still play practice here:
http://www.topcoder.com/pl/?module=Static&d1=google06&d2=arena - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I've never even heard of it, what exactly is the competition?
- lampshade, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Anyone have a link to the problems? I'm curious to see what they were like. (if they were made public )
- sarman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Middle php programmer in Moscow make 1000-2000 per month, Java - 2000-4000
- stylerm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I did it for a couple years, but only have 2 t-shirts to show for it. The top 30-50 people are so much better than everyone else it is almost not worth competing (for more than a t-shirt)
Google does send you a letter asking you to apply for a job though. And the letter came with a free pen. Not bad. - 15thPD, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Yeah, because everybody that programs, plays chess, and likes Lord of the Rings must be a helpless nerd that will fail at life. [/sarcasm]
- grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I was hoping there would be something in the article about the challenge that was set, and what set the winners code apart from the others who probably also submitted working code, ingenuity, efficiency, speed to program or something useful. Instead I read that some Russian dude winning 10K for, er, beating 100 other dudes at er, let me see um, nope not there. No digg
- EochaidRiata, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Photos from this year:
http://www.eweek.com/slideshow/0,1206,l=&s=&a=192569,00.asp - bitcloud, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3how about...
in soviet russia, search engine googles *you*! - Atomic1fire, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6fletchowns in soviet russia content talks about you
- kurrent, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7another quote from the 2003 codejam winner (taken from unstruct.org/?p=183)
"The programming languages of my choice are C/C++ and C#, both beautiful in their own ways. When I�m not programming, I like to play chess and study the works of J.R.R. Tolkien."
he forgot to mention not ever getting laid as a hobby. - SimonGray, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2GDP per capita in Russia: $11 041
Taken from WikiPedia. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1in soviet russia programs write you
- antichris, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1uh, that solution is dumb. why did it take 6 paragraphs to say 'user rated search results'. besides, that wouldn't work. they should just do a 'mark as spam' link instead.
- martinlanny, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Also interesting: Solution for improving Google’s search result relevancy:
http://www.joe0.com/2006/10/28/solution-for-improving-googles-search-result-relevancy/ - psylence, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1That's like 10 years salary in RU isn't it?
- DaMacGamer, on 10/12/2007, -16/+10in soviet Russia, code jams you!
- bbqplate, on 10/12/2007, -7/+0these grads will be nicely paid upon graduating.
- Dakana, on 10/12/2007, -13/+4Did you enter and not win, fletchowns?
- wilsgrant, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3I, for one, welcome our new Russian coder overlord.
- romulasry, on 10/12/2007, -18/+2Haha, I love those kind of jokes... XD
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