No US College In Top 10 For ACM International Programming Contest 2013

michaelmalak writes "The annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest finished up last week for 2013, but for the first time since its inception in the 1970s, no U.S. college placed in the top 10. Through 1989, a U.S. college won first place every year, but there hasn't been one in first place since 1997. The U.S. college that has won most frequently throughout the contest's history, Stanford, hasn't won since 1991. The 2013 top 10 consists entirely of colleges from Eastern Europe, East Asia, and India."

*shrug*

[coaxial]

So what? I don't see any of those schools being real power houses of innovation either.

Could be a good sign...

[ndykman]

This programming contests have nothing to do with real world programming or the skills need for most CS fields. Certainly, these are fun algorithmic challenges, but the timed nature of these contests encourage quick and dirty solutions that have no place in the real world. Creating new algorithms and other kinds of CS research requires a lot of attention to performance, scalability and correctness that aren't tested by these contests.

Okay, maybe those High Performance Trading guys want crazy quick complex code that nobody can understand, but that's kind of the problem, is it not?

Re: Yes, but . . .

[kamapuaa]

Actually, various small Pacific Island Nations are higher, then various Middle Eastern nations, then Mexico. Then US. Nauru and Samoa are 95% obese.

Re:Could be a good sign...

[Bob Hearn]

I would guess that you've never entered one of these competitions. To do well, it is not sufficient to come up with quick and dirty solutions; these will generally fail. You have to be able to find a good algorithm, quickly, and implement it, catching all the edge cases. These are certainly valuable real-world skills.

Disclaimer -- I was on the Rice team that took 3rd in 1986 (before there were any international teams at all).

Re:Could be a good sign...

[phantomfive]

If someone does well in these contests, they're probably really good programmers. Inexperienced, yes, but......that's why they're still in college. They are programmers who know how to get the computer to do what they want, which is more than a lot of 'professional' programmers.

It's not clear why you think scalability and correctness aren't tested by these contests. A lot of the problems have huge datasets, so if you use an algorithm that doesn't scale, you will fail. And of course correctness is the point.......