Google Code Jam Registration Opens Today 129
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."
Recruiting (Score:3, Informative)
Publicity (Score:1)
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 t
Re:Recruiting (Score:1, Flamebait)
I don't think I am one of the top 100 coders in the world, and so if I entered I probably wouldn't win any money. This being the case, the only reason to enter would be for the intellectual challenge; something which seems to be missing. And Google wonder why they have a problem
A *whole* $10k? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A *whole* $10k? (Score:1)
Yeah really... (Score:2)
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
Re:Yeah really... (Score:2)
Thats right, you get to keep your job
Actually I get paid extra. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 m
Re:A *whole* $10k? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I was a true coder and didn't already have plans for the dates in question I would strongly consider it. Seems like a fun and interesting th
Re:A *whole* $10k? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A *whole* $10k? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A *whole* $10k? (Score:1)
Also, if you register, there's a place to upload your resume. This seems like a good way to possible create an opening for a future job...What better way to recruit than a programming competition?
Ownership (Score:2, Interesting)
As with most slashdot questions... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:As with most slashdot questions... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ownership (Score:2)
Perl? (Score:1)
Hey c'mon! VB.NET and no Perl?
Re:Perl? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Perl? (Score:2)
Perl is job security through obscurity.
Re:Perl? (Score:1)
They picked object-oriented languages.
Re:Perl? (Score:2)
The problem us that they only want to offer up some small subset of languages instead of opening it up to any language you wish to bring to the party, which is how most every programming contest should be run. THe ICFP contest allows all languages, you'd think mighty Google could figure out how to open up the door.
Re:Perl? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Perl? (Score:2)
Re:Perl? (Score:1)
Re:Perl? - or any functional languages (Score:1)
Re:Perl? (Score:1, Funny)
Can we enter a bot? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Can we enter a bot? (Score:2)
This is easy to circumvent, however, as more complicated/obscure natural language constructs can be used to confuse the bot (botfu
Re:Can we enter a bot? (Score:2)
This will not happen in the near future if
Re:Can we enter a bot? (Score:2)
and the Matrix still needs us to survive for our electrochemical enegy, so I guess we're still useful for something.
Re:Can we enter a bot? (Score:2)
I think he was joking, aluding to the poker bots which are often thought, by laymen, to be able to clean out the online players. It should be clear to any programmer that programming bots for this kind of a contest are unlikely to be even attempted in the near future.
Re:Can we enter a bot? (Score:2)
Re:Can we enter a bot? (Score:2)
Re:Can we enter a bot? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd argue that in the case of a computer playing chess, it was instructed how to play by humans.
A better analogy would be a computer that is able to take the rules of chess as it's only input and figure out how to play and beat humans on it's own.
Re:Can we enter a bot? (Score:2)
I agree, my point was simply that AI research has a long history of extravagant claims of things happening "soon" which never pan out.
A better analogy would be a computer that is able to take the rules of chess as it's only input and figure out how to play and beat humans on it's own.
Even with human coding the field isn't doing well, as the best methods can only work on a subset of problems. Deep Blue had its har
Re:Can we enter a bot? (Score:2)
Re:Can we enter a bot? (Score:1)
Anyhow, I know a bot. [google.com]
False Advertisment? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:False Advertisment? (Score:1)
Re:False Advertisment? (Score:2)
Have to use their IDE! (Score:2)
I wonder if they consider it cheating to write your
Re:Have to use their IDE! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Have to use their IDE! (Score:2)
Anyone have any idea on the difficulty of the problems? The language choices suck, but I'm still curious as to what kind of problems they throw at you.
Re:Have to use their IDE! (Score:3, Informative)
You can practice on similiar problems in the same environment in the topcoder testing arena. Register for topcoder here [topcoder.com]. Referrer rrenaud [topcoder.com].
Would be nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Would be nice... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Would be nice... (Score:1)
Re:Would be nice... (Score:1)
Re:Would be nice... (Score:2)
int solutions = 0
array target =
matrix maze =
procedure step (int distance, coord position)
if target.length = distance
solutions++
return
next_letter = target[distance + 1]
foreach direction in {N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW}
Re:Would be nice... (Score:2)
Thanks! (And another solution) (Score:2)
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 [moertel.com]. Thanks again for the link.
Cheers,
Tom
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Would be nice... (Score:2)
Hopefully somebody can code up a way... (Score:1)
Re:Hopefully somebody can code up a way... (Score:1)
Re:Hopefully somebody can code up a way... (Score:1)
vb.net? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:vb.net? (Score:2)
Re:vb.net? (Score:2)
I know you were trying to be funny, but ... in all seriousness, VB.NET and C# are very similar in capabilities, especially with their 2005 (.NET Framework 2.0) versions, and I barely even hesitate to say that they are practically the same language with a different syntax, though I believe there still are a few things one can do that the other can't, and vice versa.
I moved over from VB.NET to C# (granted, I was already familiar with C++ and Java, the inspiration for C#'s syntax) without needing anything mor
How is VB.NET in there? (Score:2)
Maybe I'm just irritated that Perl isn't an option. Then again, we'd know what language made it.
Re:How is VB.NET in there? (Score:1)
Re:How is VB.NET in there? (Score:1)
For the first part, they're all object oriented, so Perl is (for the most part) out of the question as per languages to use.
I'll ignore the remark about Perl's OOP and go right to the heart of it. Object oriented programming is hardly a part of the TopCoder/Google Code Jam experience. Any language that has the capacity to understand strings and multi-dimensional lists (including C) could possibly be added to TopCoder. One of the biggest complaints against Perl's addition to TC is that it would make the
Re:How is VB.NET in there? (Score:1)
Python, too (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Python, too (Score:2)
Yes, but read the fine print. Programs must run in under a certain amount of time. And they write that because of it's slower speed, Python may not be able to solve some of the problems. P
Re:Python, too (Score:1)
Otherwise, this could be a problem:
From http://www.topcoder.com/pl/?&mo [topcoder.com]
Bad timing for university students! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad timing for university students! (Score:1)
Don't forget to include a GANTT chart. Developers love those things.
Re:Bad timing for university students! (Score:1)
Re:Bad timing for university students! (Score:1)
Definitely an American code jam (Score:1, Flamebait)
Roozbeh is the one
Re:Definitely an American code jam (Score:1)
Re:Definitely an American code jam (Score:2)
If you read your own link [google.com] beyond the list of countries, you'd see
I believe the listed countries are being actively boycotted by the US right now (but i can't find a link to verify it).
The obvious reason that people in these countries can't compete is because Google would be unable to legally give any prize to winners in those countries.
Re:Definitely an American code jam (Score:1)
"Cash and prizes, including t-shirts, will not be provided to residents of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan or Syria."
It does not say that said residents are not eligible to participate.
And... just speculating, but Google might not want to send stuff to those countries in fear that it might be said to be an American company funding terrorists... Not that it would be true, but they might be trying to prevent some possible bad press. Meh...
Foot in mouth... (Score:1)
Crap. Saw the terms on another link which stated it a bit differently... And missed the other post.
Nothing to see here...
Re:Foot in mouth... (Score:1)
Re:Definitely an American code jam (Score:1)
Timeline... (Score:1)
Re:Timeline... (Score:2)
With instruction reading skills like that, I don't think you should enter...
Re:Timeline... (Score:1)
Re:Timeline... (Score:1)
Re:Timeline... (Score:2)
Funny that immediately after you say you don't know what an operand is, the next words out of your mouth are.. an operand.
Age limit (Score:1)
Einstein would lose (Score:2)
Re:Fraud.. (Score:1)
Re:Fraud.. (Score:2)
Re:Fraud.. (Score:2)
TURTLE GOTO ANSWER
And that's it!
Re:Fraud.. (Score:2)
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
Re:Fraud.. (Score:1)
Re:Fraud.. (Score:1, Informative)
Considering Ruby (in my experience, at least) is considerable slower than Python, I can see why they left out Ruby.
Re:Fraud.. (Score:1)
Re:Fraud.. (Score:1)
Re:Fraud.. (Score:1)
Re:Fraud.. (Score:2)
typedef int protected;
protected private(int public, char *protected);
void class(void);
and so on
Re:Fraud.. (Score:1)
Re:Fraud.. (Score:1)
Re:Fraud.. (Score:1)