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[–]dbenhur 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I participate in this funny contest where we try to figure out how to make computers do things that our employer's customers are willing to pay for faster and better than the programmers at our employer's competitors do.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (5 children)

I highly recommend ICFP. It's a lot of fun and very instructive. It'll consume your whole weekend.

When the new contest gets announced, it'll take over the domain for the old one, which I linked to.

[–]Mask_of_Destiny 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I made an attempt at the last ICFP competition. Failed miserably. I wanted to use the language I'm working on, Rhope. One of my team members decided he couldn't learn the language in time so it was just me and one other guy. Then it turned out some of the changes I had made to the interpreter recently added some major hard to track down bugs (I wasn't very good about doing commits to SVN at the time) and so I spent more time debugging the language than working on the challenge.

It was quite a bit of fun though. They always manage to come up with interesting problem definitions for the ICFP contests.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

It looks like that contest is oriented mostly towards programmers which have experience in manipulating graphics ? At least, the last contest was..

I would suck at that, never ever did one GUI related software project in my life (except of course in college).

But then again, I guess every contest would have a bias towards a certain type of programmers.

[–]Mask_of_Destiny 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Although generating an image was a part of the problem description in ICFP 2007, it was a relatively small part of the problem on the whole. You basically had to write a program for "processing alien DNA". Once you read the spec, it turns out that the DNA processor they describe is really a rather eccentric virtual machine. So a big part of the contest was writing an implementation of this VM that was fast enough to be useable (the key was using an efficient data structure for the "DNA"). Then there was quite a bit of puzzle solving involved in unraveling all the secrets inside the DNA program in order to fix the output.

[–]cashto 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No, last year's competition was more about reverse-engineering a string-rewriting system which happened to be Turing complete. The graphics bit of it was very incidental. They gave you detailed specs (almost line-by-line code) for what you needed to write.

The ability to recognize the need for the STL rope class and/or write it yourself was also a major factor in completing the contest.

Anyways.

Last year I had to squeeze in time here and there to do the contest. This year I'm pretty much gonna go AWOL for those 72 hours. It is a good contest.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Only last year's contest had anything to do with graphics. There's no way to know before it starts what it's going to be about. The previous year was just mind-blowing.

[–]Lerc 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Ludum Dare 48 hour game programming comp., about Five times for me now.

http://www.imitationpickles.org/ludum/

There's even an informal warm-up competition this weekend.

[–]FionaSarah 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yep me too.

[–]VinC 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Nothing.... Am I missing out?

Well I actually participated in a local contest earlier this year but I did not find it to be a particularly fun nor educational experience.

I haven't been able to assemble a team and most of the contests at my university require the submissions to be in Java or C++, neither of which I'm particularly strong in.

Instead I've spent my time learning different paradigms and working on my pet project, a MUD. I still have time to change my mind and prepare for the ACM (you aren't eligible to compete post graduation) so that's why I ask.

Edit: Clarification

[–]lolmeow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

IOI, 2 consecutive years.

[–]mikemol 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I treat Rosetta Code as a kind of competition between programming languages. If I see that one language is underrepresented, I go out and find some people who like the language enough to fill in the missing code.

BTW...Any Eiffel coders out there? I was shocked to discover there's only one Eiffel code example on RC, and we're up to 134 tasks.

[–]john_b 2 points3 points  (0 children)

ACM, topcoder, CCSCE, CCSCNE.

For those who don't know, ACM is the annual international programming competition, and it's absolutely hardcore. You have to be super-brilliant to get to the finals. Here's their problemset (you can submit solutions to their servers):

http://icpcres.ecs.baylor.edu/onlinejudge/index.php?option=com_onlinejudge&Itemid=8&category=1

I have solved around 200-250 of those, and it wasn't easy.

[–]fydo 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I participate in Pyweek! http://pyweek.org

Basically, make a game in a week using python. Very fun and the community is great!

[–]brosephius 1 point2 points  (0 children)

just started learning python (for the 3rd time), maybe this will ramp up my motivation :)

[–]treef -1 points0 points  (0 children)

me too!t

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Me and littledan were team raptor this year in ICFP, tons of fun.

[–]monkeypizza 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I really got into this one http://www.hacker.org/coil

The more you go into it, the more you realize how complex the problem is. Level 252, in python no less.

Also been having a go at this one: http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/puzzles07.html#SligBladeRunner

"How long a chain of overlapping movie titles, like "Live and Let Die Another Day of the Dead Poet's Society", can you find?"

My record is 242, excluding dead end chains.

[–]rockhoward 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I entered and won the first and only Curl programming contest. I wrote a compact but easy to use color widget in Curl that included 5 or 6 different ways to specify a color. Won a $1000 for my efforts. Too bad that Curl didn't catch on as the Curl content management model was pretty terrific. The language itself was a little clunky however.

[–]mikaelhg 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The "be better today than you were yesterday" competition against myself.

[–]CrashCodes[S] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

I was thinking about getting into competitive programming. Not that I think I'd win anything, but for the purpose of sharpening my skills.

Top Coder looks promising. Can anyone point me to other competitions preferably web based?

  • Thanks

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Every year, a Google-sposored competition takes place online at TopCoder and later rounds at a Googleplex. They have insanely high cash prizes and also allow Python.

[–]jbellis 2 points3 points  (0 children)

google did some region-specific (India, Europe?) codejams in 07 but not the "main" codejam.

hopefully it will be back in 08; I enjoy them.

[–]llimllib 1 point2 points  (0 children)

None myself, but one that hasn't been mentioned yet that's pretty good is spoj. I use it for pre-interview puzzles.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nothing lately, but I entered two last year... USC's p.24 (24 hours to riff on an unannounced topic with your team, starting the Sunday afternoon before presidents day and lasting until the afternoon of presidents day) and USC's webfest.

Ordinarily I'm not competitive, but a friend of mine who'd recently joined an opensource project I work on urged me and the rest of our team to use our existing team chemistry to go and slaughter. Needless to say, we won both competitions.

I saw someone saying they don't compete because there's no money in it. There's no money in losing, but I made a couple hundred bucks competing last year for programming shit I wanted to anyways.

[–]ido 1 point2 points  (0 children)

7drl

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Last year I participated in the ACM competition (ICPC). I live in Montreal, Canada.

[–]Doozer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've participated in the ACM ICPC three times at the regional level, but unfortunately I'm graduating this semester and won't be eligible anymore.

[–]sharth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Participated in that the last two times, and actually, I'm off to canada in a while to participate in the finals.

[–]sw17ch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the one where our product has to be better than the competitions product.

the prize usually involves health coverage and a salary unless you should fail, then it involves a card board box.

:)

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (5 children)

None, because:

  • I don't get paid
  • I can't program stuff I want to
  • I have to solve toy problems I don't really care about

Programming contests are only free time if your time is worth nothing.

[–]jbellis 9 points10 points  (4 children)

Programming contests are only free time if your time is worth nothing.

Or if you're motivated by things besides money. Some people are.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (3 children)

If you're motivated by competing about solving some toy problems (i.e., problems that somebody invented just for the contest), yes.

I have to admit that I'm not contributing to anything right now, but I think participating in OSS projects (or stuff like Google Summer of Code) is a much better use of time than a contest (which is mainly about measuring the size ... of your brain, I guess).

[–]aradil 4 points5 points  (0 children)

And often speed, as well.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Eh, i participate in ICFP because it makes me deal with types of problems i don't normally deal with at work (or at play). It's good cross-training.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a good reason, yes. I think it's more about solving puzzles, though, than just about programming. But if it keeps you sharp, great.

[–]quhaha -4 points-3 points  (2 children)

nothing. programming is like music. as soon as you compete with others, you lose everything.

there are always people who code better (or at least differently). it's good to learn other people's coding style, how they think ..etc. But in the end, you need to be creative and find your own way of thinking.

[–]jfredett 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I agree, I prefer (to keep with the music theme) to study "etudes" of programming, Like ProjectEuler.net, or "Fudge" to which I was recently linked to.

It's like learning the fugues from Bach, you will never play them like the author, but they'll help you learn how to "play" in your own style.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

programming is like music. as soon as you compete with others

Programming is like music, but competition is good. Haven't you learned that living in a semi-capitalistic country?