Last semester I attended ACM's (Association for Computing Machinery) bi-annual programming competition at a local University. My University sent 2 teams of 3 people and we competed amongst other schools in the mid-west. We got our butts kicked. You are given a packet with about 11 problems (1 problem per page) and you have 4 hours t...
What are your preferred size-coding (competitions for the smallest program that does something, or for the smallest source code) oriented sites? There was a really nice python site, I can't remember where it is. Hugi size-coding compo comes to my mind and it's also nice. ...
I am looking to hone my programming skills outside of school/work and was wondering if any of you have participated in competitive arenas like CoreWar or TopCoder strictly for the purpose of self-improvement. If so, have you found them to be worthwhile and are there any other similar 'games' out there which merit mentioning? ...
I'm interested in both single coder and team competitions. ...
G'day All. First time question-asker. A recent question (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/505404/what-are-good-programming-competitions) asked about good programming competitions. This got me thinking. My question is, What competitions exist for the Solving of Business Problems? Yeah, I know Real Life is the actual competition, but...
Hi, I've been practicing doing topcoder and acm contests(local ones and practice sets). But I'm hitting a brick wall in terms of performance. I can solve the first topcoder problem, but almost never the second one. I need some solid theory and memory of common strategies/algos/structures involved in these types of competitions. Just try...
I'm participating in the Competencia Latinoamericana de Programacion this month and I was wondering if any of you have ever programmed competitively. The contest is basically 10 questions and I have to design an algorithm for each question with a team of 2 other people. What are some things I should be ready for? What exercises should ...
There are a few threads on SO that discuss coding contents & competitions. Unfortunately, many of them are either contrived problems, or based entirely on theory, math, and/or algorithms. Where can I find some contests that focus on the application development process, wherein the competetitors deliver an entire, functional & usable prod...
Does anyone know of an open source AI programming competition framework( shell)? The target should be 'game aware'. I'd like it to: Be written in Java Have a reliable way to measure/terminate time slices. (e.g. bytecodes executed) Run compiled AIs against each other. (class files) If there is anything like this available, let me kno...
Sorry to ask this kind of questions. But I am eager to know some good sites where I can have the opportunity to have some sql competitions. I found 1 TroyK's T-SQL Challenge but it is not free. I am looking for a free one. And also C# programming competitions. One I found is Code Chef I am Looking for some more. Also, it should ...
The closure of a recent entertaining 'question' got me wondering what would have been a better forum for the challenge presented. I know there is a similar question, but most of the responses are pointers to infrequent and or hierarchical style challenges. I don't see any where the programming community creates both the challenges and ...
I'd like to run competitions like code golf competitions, but the winner would have the fastest algorithm, not the smallest code. One fair way to measure speed of an algorithm is to use a neutral virtual machine, like Java's JVM. Is there an easy way to know the total number of JVM instructions executed? (If the entry uses multiple t...
I was working on this graph problem from the UVa problem set. It's a single-source-shortest-paths problem with no negative edge weights. From what I've gathered, the algorithm with the best big-O running time for such problems is Dijkstra with a Fibonacci heap as the priority queue, although practically speaking a binary heap is easier t...
When I was in university, I helped organize a programming competition for Computer Science students. I believe we had 4 questions in total and allowed an hour for each one. The best received question was: Sort a series of integers such that the order goes from lowest-highest-lowest. eg. If given 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, the correct sor...
I would like to test my C++ programming skill level by competing with others. What programming contests are there for C++? ...
I am preparing myself for programming competitions and i would like to know how can i solve this problem. I guess it's geometry problem, and it seems i can't get any ideas about solving it. Here it is: There is a yard in which there are wolves and sheep. In the yard there are also blocks which do not allow to pass. The wolves are repr...
Intro: EDIT: See solution at the bottom of this question (c++) I have a programming contest coming up in a bit, and I've been prepping :) I'm practicing using these questions: http://cemc.math.uwaterloo.ca/contests/computing/2009/stage2/day1.pdf I'm looking at problem B ("Dinner"). Any idea where to start? I can't really think of a...
After competing in and following this year's Google Code Jam competition, I couldn't help but notice the incredible number of [successful] contestants that used C/C++ and Java. The distribution of languages used throughout the competition can be seen here. After programming in C/C++ for several years, I recently fell in love with Pytho...
I just have seen this nice screencast of someone coding for the Ludumdare 48h competition. I seem to miss such contests most of the time and only hear about them when they ended. I would love to attend to some (if it happens that I have time), just for the fun (because I don't know if I would have any chance to actually win). Where wou...
Hello, I'm trying to prepare for the ACM competition in November, and I'm going through the practice problems and getting stuck on data structure or implementation problems. I tried to find a discussion board or forum for discussing these types of problems, but I couldn't find one in about thirty minutes of Web searching. Is there a f...