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Announcements Programming Technology

TopCoder Open 2004 Programming Tournament 42

Posted by michael from the free-if-your-time-has-no-value dept.
TAG writes "TopCoder just announced rules for this year annual international programming tournament. The 2004 TopCoder Open, Sponsored by Microsoft will set as rivals some of the IT industry's top professionals and international collegiate coders. Software will be designed and developed. Seemingly unsolvable algorithmic problems will be solved. $150,000 will be awarded over the course of 14 weeks. 24 of the world's best programmers will be invited to compete live at the onsite finals in Santa Clara, CA, USA. This competition is 'Free'. Yep. Free as beer. Everybody over the age of 18 is eligible. So? What is your TopCoder rating today?"
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TopCoder Open 2004 Programming Tournament More

TopCoder Open 2004 Programming Tournament

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  • This is what recruiting has come to? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chris_mahan ( 256577 ) <chris.mahan@gmail.com> on Friday July 30, 2004 @12:12PM (#9844613) Homepage
    Is this what corporate recruiting has come to? A love-fest?

    As the artist forerly known as Prince, and now known as prince again would say: "Party like it's 1999". (dot com ref for the dense)

  • OO-Centric (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pkhuong ( 686673 )
    quoth http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=help&d 2=codingWindow

    "TopCoder currently allows coders to utilize Java, C++, C#, or Visual Basic .Net as a competition programming language."

    "Your solution will essentially be a class that contains at least one method - as defined in the problem statement. "

    From this we learn that good programmers only use Algol-like languages (In fact, C-like) or VB, and all use OO.

    • Re:OO-Centric (Score:2, Interesting)

      by HappyKleenexDude ( 716112 )
      Classes don't make a program object-oriented. You could write your entire program in the class's single method, and it certainly wouldn't be OO. As for the languages, well, it's pretty standard. The ACM ICPC and IOI also both heavily restrict language usage to these languages or fewer (although I think you can use PASCAL if you really want). Perhaps the idea is that 'good programmers' aren't language dependant, and can carry over their skills to at least one of those languages.

      • Re:OO-Centric (Score:2, Informative)

        by pkhuong ( 686673 )
        The ICFP doesn't require you to use any specific programming language.

        http://www.cis.upenn.edu/proj/plclub/contest/fa q .p hp

        "What will the submission format be?
        Your entry to the contest will be a plain text file in a format that we will specify in the task description.

        You may write your entry entirely by hand, or generate it using tools in a programming language of your choice; we will ask you to submit the source code for these tools (if any) along with your entry, and we will look at them for purposes

        • Re:OO-Centric (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          The ICFP doesn't require you to use any specific programming language.

          Er, and the IFCP does not require source to be immediately uploaded to their servers, compiled using their software, and tested using their test programs. They have to restrict the languages to do that. Deal with it. It's not some secret plot to push OO solutions. The class is required only for symmetry with languages like Java that require methods to be contained inside classes.

      • Re:OO-Centric (Score:2, Insightful)

        by pkhuong ( 686673 )
        BTW, I forgot to add this to my first reply: Good programmers use the right tool for the right task. If a task is simplified by, say, dynamic typing, continuations, closures, backtracking or run-time definition of functions, why should one not use a language that responds to one's needs? From what i gather, the reason for the language restrictions in these contests is mostly that most of the problems would be too easy in many excluded languages.

    • Re:OO-Centric (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hsoft ( 742011 )
      I was about to register there when I bumped into the language list. Too bad they don't have pascal (MS sponsored, I should have known...). I know that I should be able to write in one of these language, but people using one of these language as their main language will always have a considerable advantage over me (Except for VB coders, of course, who are inherently bad coders ;) ).

      I prefer the way ICFP does. It was my first try this year, and I liked it. Too bad my brother and I made bad design choices at

  • TopCoder (Score:5, Informative)

    by RealityMogul ( 663835 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @12:32PM (#9844852)
    Does anybody here actually take part in their competitions? I tried it and it blows. All the so-called competitions are the same damn thing over and over. It's a few nested loops every time. It's either process this number using this formula, or sort this data.

    The people that have the highest scores have little templates built with all the variables and loops setup already, so all they have to do is write one or two lines. Yeah, that shows who the best robots, err, I mean coders are.

    • Re:TopCoder (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It at least demonstrates that they have the analytical ability to evaluate a group of problems and abstract the common elements of those problems to reduce coding effort/time.

    • Re:TopCoder (Score:2, Insightful)

      by HappyKleenexDude ( 716112 )
      "It's a few nested loops every time. It's either process this number using this formula, or sort this data." At the lower levels, perhaps. Their single-round matches are designed so that a large range of skill levels can compete. I suggest you take a look at some of the problems from the later rounds in the last TCO - they're all available online - and you'll see they're more complex than you describe.
    • suck at topcoder [ihttp]. hopefully I'll break out of division two (requires a 1200 rating, gained ~70 points last match) tomorrow. But even the highest point question in division 2 requires some mathematical or algorithmic insight to solve. Sure, the easiest in div 2 are trivial, and the medium in div two is usually just a few nested loops, but the division 1 problems are much harder. To call the highest rated people just a bunch of code monkeys is a huge understatement. They are quite intelligent people.

      I

    • I want to, but the software apparently doesnt work on my machine. FireFox .9x with JRE 1.4.x (ive tried many combinations, hence the x's). I can get the little popup to show me a LAUNCH button, but the button does nothing.

    • Re:TopCoder (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Chromodromic ( 668389 )
      Yeah, that shows who the best robots, err, I mean coders are.

      Yes, I often encounter this attitude among those that suck at TopCoder. Well, if that's all there is to these "so-called competitions" then, you know, just make some "little templates" of your own -- be a "robot", that is -- and make yourself $50,000 in the algorithm competition. I mean, that's all there is to it, right? Just a few templates? All those other guys are just robots ...

      Or, here's an idea, you might try stowing your ego for ten min

      • I was thinking of posting something like this, but decided not to. But you did it for me! Thanks. :)

        It always bugs me when people put down things they couldn't do. I mean, I could play baseball professionally, right? You just hit the ball. It's not that hard.

        -ZorbaTHut, ranked #5 in the world on Topcoder
      • Obviously you're a total genius, and know me better than anyone else to be able to take a few sentences and determine enough about me to figure out my motivation, skills, and personality.

        Have you ever thought of starting a psychic hotline, you'd be really good at it.
    • So, basically, you didn't do very well, right?

  • ACM (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fishybell ( 516991 ) <fishybell.hotmail@com> on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:23PM (#9845542) Homepage Journal
    As far as I can tell, this is run exactly like the ACM annual contest. You go in, solve a few problems, and go out. From what I can tell, the ACM is better because it only allows college students to enter, you go in teams, not as individuals, and it's sponsered by IBM, not Microsoft.
    • I never went to college you insensitive clod!!
    • It's sponsored by Microsoft. Therefore, you get to take money any from Microsoft. How bad can that be?

      The cool thing about topcoder is they have real time competitions over the internet a few times a month. And then they will have a summary of how the round went along with solutions at the next day.

      It's not like you can only do one, both are worthwhile IMO.

  • Wow... expired certificates and all... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Vaginal Discharge ( 706367 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:55PM (#9846011)

    You'd expect that TopCoder would have uptodate security certificate. But apparently, when I'm trying to download the applet, I saw that their certificate expired in January. So I'm just supposed to trust them huh?

    From what I've seen and heard, the problems are not terribly complex, but instead they make you do them as fast as possible. How does this make people better coders? I'd rather spend a week on a really challenging problem, than to spend 30 seconds and write as many for-loops as possible.

  • Well, they won't get me to compete in Java, C++, C# or Visual Basic.NET. Thats for sure. You can see that the competition is sponsored by Microsoft there :)
    • At least for their previous competions, the C++ compiler they use is g++. The contest applet runs happily on my Linux box. Topcoder isn't influenced that much by Microsoft, or else they surely wouldn't offer Java.

      But nontheless, I'd like to have the opportunity to use different langauges (Python!). But I can see why they would want to support only 4 langauges, rather than 50, like they would have to if everyone could use their pet langauge.

  • Why limit languages? (Score:3)

    by GnuVince ( 623231 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @03:06PM (#9846805)
    Why do they limit the choice of languages? I mean, why not let Smalltalkers and APLers participate with their language of choice as well?

    One of the requirement could be to clearly comment the code.

    • One of the requirements could be to clearly comment the code.

      You obviously don't understand these competitions.

      The tricky part isn't the programming. These are small programs. It's figuring out WHAT to program that is difficult - the problem solving portion, you know?

      The whole idea is to write the code quickly and your score is based on the time it takes to complete it. So, how much time should someone spend on comments?

      You'd have to somehow assess the value of someone's comments to offset the cost of
  • I don't mean this as off-topic flamebait, and I'm kinda unaware of how fast things evolve there in the States, but.. "Cash prizes will not be paid to residents of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria." Is this new or s'thing?..err, it doesn't sound very legal.
  • It seems unfair to have a restriction on the languages used. They should have one defined problem with many languages to approach it.

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