Registration for the Google Code Jam 2005 ends August 22nd.
The event is hosted by Topcoder, who has done impressive work creating automated online multiuser programming competitions.
The basic format is this:
- You register and download the Topcoder client program.
- The actual competition is in real time. You are placed in a group with perhaps 25-50 other users and are given three programming tasks of varying difficulty (make a program that given this input, returns this output etc…) which you can then solve in a number of different programming languages.
- After having submitted your programs, there is a brief pause where you can go over the programming of your competitors and find flaws for extra points.
- The Topcoder system then runs your program with a number of test cases. If your program fails, you get 0 points, otherwise your score depends on how quickly you solved the task.
The actual challenges seem to be mostly standard computer science “hard problems” – problems that are easy to solve if you have an infinitely big computer, but very hard if they have to be run in a few seconds. Find the shortest path through a changing graph, that sort of thing. (Which certainly favors people who have actually studied computer science.)
Programming is a strange activity, but kudos to Topcoder for using it as a game.