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We Have a Winner: Programming Contests Show Impressive Growth

Greg Goth

lobal software programming contests are made once somebody makes a hiring decision,” expanding in number, size, and scope. says Jack Hughes, founder and chairman of Student programmers and, increasingly, TopCoder, a Glastonbury, Connecticut-based their professional colleagues are taking company that bases its business model on a the opportunity to “show their stuff” un- “competitive community” approach to develop- G der the trying conditions of controlled ing software. TopCoder holds ongoing competi- competition. For the winners, the visibility they tions in which winners receive compensation for receive can be instrumental in jump-starting a ca- designing system components or top-performing reer (besides the cash and merchandise prizes they algorithms. Any member of the TopCoder Com- might receive). For sponsors, the contests mean munity (which is free to join) may participate. beneficial exposure to prospective employees, The company runs development contests under partners, and customers. its own banner as well as global sponsored con- As the contests have outgrown single facilities, tests such as Google’s Code Jam and America and as the private sector has joined the academic Online’s TopCoder Collegiate Challenge. sector to fund and conduct these larger contests, Hughes says the contests take some of the skeptics have raised questions about their true guesswork out of committing an investment in utility and ultimate fairness—in both measuring a new hire. and rewarding competitors’ efforts. Also, empiri- “Those folks doing the hiring are going to cal comparison of contests with different rules, look for as many data points as possible to take regulations, and rewards has been difficult, as has the risk out of that decision, and that’s why any attempt to determine which model might be these contests are becoming more and more vis- most beneficial to the most participants. In gen- ible, and more people are entering them. There’s eral, however, organizers say that these competi- probably not an order-of-magnitude difference tions provide intangible benefits that justify their in what a winning contestant can command in proliferation. These benefits—meeting and com- compensation, but I don’t think it’s too far off. peting against like-minded scholars and program- Winning an Association of Computing Machin- mers, and learning the professional culture of the ery competition, winning a TopCoder competi- developer community—promote the commu- tion, is a write-your-own ticket kind of event, nity’s sense of solidarity. and that’s a big deal for a lot of people.”

A must-have credential The ACM granddaddy According to one industry executive, pro- The original student programming competi- gramming contests have evolved into a must- tion, the ACM’s International Collegiate Pro- have credential for developers. gramming Contest, traces its roots to a 1970 “Good talent is expensive pretty much any- competition held by the Upsilon Pi Epsilon honor where, so there’s an awfully big investment fraternity at Texas A&M University. Since 1997,

0740-7459/06/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE November/December 2006 IEEE SOFTWARE 99 IN THE NEWS the contest has grown by a factor of of these factors include the collabora- crease the IEEE’s visibility among techno- seven, from 840 teams representing 560 tive global culture of academia, strong logically minded students of many disci- universities to 5,606 three-person teams secondary educational system empha- plines. Doing so will not only strengthen representing 1,737 institutions. sis on science and technology in these the IEEE, but Varela says it might also In early 2007, 85 three-person teams countries, and the rise of Internet- broaden the base of programming skills that qualified in global regional competi- enabled programming paradigms that in industry as recruiters familiar with the tions will converge for the ICPC world fi- eliminate physical distance as a barrier. IEEE’s solid reputation become aware of nals at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. the new activity. The contest runs five hours, in which the The IEEE upstart “One of our goals is to diversify a lit- teams face juried questions of varying One of the world’s other giant engi- tle bit more,” he says. “The IEEE has difficulty. The contest’s executive direc- neering societies, the IEEE, is just be- gone past electrical engineering to cover tor, Baylor computer science professor ginning its own programming contest so many fields, such as biomedicine, William Poucher, says the ACM contest’s this year. telecommunications, and computer sci- cachet can indeed be at least partially at- The IEEE’s programming contest is a ence. We say the IEEE today really tributed to its long history. bit different from the ACM contest. Ri- stands for ‘the institute of engineers and “Unlike the other competitions, we ac- cardo Varela, the IEEE’s student repre- everybody else!’ And, when you look at tually grew up with the disciplines of sentative from Region 8, which encom- those who are studying some of those computer science and computer engineer- passes Europe, Africa, the Middle East, other disciplines, there are some who are ing,” Poucher says. “The vast majority of and Russia, says the contest was envi- great coders even if they are not com- people in the industry can’t remember sioned as a global activity for its student puter science people. What you want as there not being the ACM International branches. Unlike the ACM contest, in a company is to hire the best coders, not Collegiate Programming Contest. You which the finalists converge on one locale necessarily computer science people, and could probably go to the typical research for a short, intense period of program- diversifying the total spectrum of people and development labs of major compa- ming, the IEEE Xtreme 24-Hour Pro- who are participating in programming nies, and the developers, many of them, gramming Contest will be conducted at contests is going to be good. The IEEE have a T-shirt from the ICPC world finals IEEE student branches worldwide at the can use its size as the largest computer somewhere in their wardrobe.” same time. Varela says the contest is ten- science and engineering organization in As the discipline of computer sci- tatively scheduled for early December. the world to attract participants.” ence has grown, so too has the ICPC The goals behind the contest, the IEEE Varela says he will be happy to see contestant pool and the difficulty of says, are to provide student branches 100 to 150 teams—somewhere between the programming tasks involved. with a new and interesting activity; in- 300 and 500 people—take part in the in- “The problems are harder than ever,” crease the number of activities that focus augural Xtreme contest. Poucher says. “In computer science, the on the computer, programming, and in- information base has doubled every five formation technology fields; and differ Keeping it private years since 1950, so there’s more to from other competitions and from other While the ACM and IEEE contests learn, but the contestants are sharper IEEE activities. strive to strengthen the organizations’ than ever. It used to be the contest was Varela says the contest also aims to in- ties to academia, the private sector has six hours long on mainframes, and we also become deeply involved in running wouldn’t see any problems submitted global programming contests and in at- until the fourth or fifth hour. Now, we tempting to diversify beyond the cam- have solutions at the world finals pre- pus and beyond programming. Goo- sented 10 or 15 minutes into the contest, gle’s Code Jam, for instance, is open to and three-quarters of those contestants both student and nonstudent program- are not native English speakers.” mers; Anne Driscoll, Google’s staffing- In recent years, in fact, contestants programs manager, says this year’s reg- from both the former Soviet bloc and istrants included 60 percent students China have performed extremely well. and 40 percent nonstudents (with 85 Two of the four gold-medal teams in the The 2006 Google percent of the finalists being students). 2006 finals hailed from Russia and one Code Jam attracted She adds that this year’s Code Jam at- from Poland. In the 2005 finals, two 20,000 contestants tracted 20,000 contestants from 143 gold-medal teams once again came from nations, up from 14,000 in 2005. Russia, and one came from China. from 143 nations, up Microsoft has run its Imagine Cup Poucher and TopCoder’s Hughes as- from 14,000 in 2005. contests annually since 2003. In 2004, cribe the strong showing of Eastern Eu- the Imagine Cup attracted 10,000 par- ropean and Chinese programmers to ticipants; in 2006, it attracted 68,000 several factors that dovetail well. Some contestants. (The competition is open to

100 IEEE SOFTWARE www.computer.org/software IN THE NEWS high school and college students.) The competition has expanded from its orig- Contest Home Pages inal category of software design to nine categories, including short film, digital 2006 Computer Society International Design Competition, www.computer. photography, and interface design. org/csidc Imagine Cup director Emanuele Ognis- ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, http://icpc.baylor.edu/ santi says that, after the inaugural con- icpc test, students and educators asked Mi- Google Code Jam, www.google.com/codejam crosoft to include related fields that Imagine Cup, www.imaginecup.com needed technology savvy but not neces- TopCoder, www.topcoder.com sarily programming skill. According to Ognissanti, although some might take the cynical view that Microsoft adds in- Coder rating? Do you have contest par- oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/11/ vitational categories “depending on ticipation?’ they [students] are seeing it stark_criticism_of_microsofts.html). what products we are introducing,” the now as it has to be part of their CV if Specifically, he criticizes the require- added categories actually lower the en- they want to get a job at Microsoft, ment that contestants must sign over try barriers by giving students a wider Google, or what have you.” to Microsoft the right to use, for any range of options in which to express purpose, intellectual property, including themselves. Voices of caution ideas, concepts, know-how, or tech- And, as high-level scripting lan- While contest promoters speak glow- niques, contained in contest applications. guages and frameworks begin to make ingly of the spirit of camaraderie and Shockey writes that this would let Mi- coding easier and more attractive to a community inherent in the competitions, crosoft lift student ideas for nothing. Mi- wider audience, other sponsors are ex- others have voiced some concerns. crosoft’s Ognissanti, however, says the panding their categories and core skill One example appeared in a recent edi- vast number of ideas that cross the sets as well. TopCoder’s Hughes says tion of the journal Informatics in Educa- company’s transom in the course of the they decided to include Python in this tion. Researchers from the University of contest could lead to specious litiga- year’s Code Jam, although few contes- Waterloo—a perennial top-performing tion. A student might claim that a Mi- tants chose to use it. university at the ICPC—question prevail- crosoft product was based on an Imag- “We want to cover the whole spec- ing assumptions about algorithmic con- ine Cup idea, even though the concept trum, from artificial intelligence and tests’ broad-based utility in strengthening was created coincidentally and sepa- compiler theory all the way up to the the computer science community: rately. scripting languages, Ajax, and so on,” The intellectual property issues in Hughes says. Algorithmic programming contests Code Jam could be even more prob- One critical facet of the industry-spon- in the style of ICPC, IOI and Top- lematic for contestants who wish to re- sored contests is the emphasis on recruit- Coder emphasize a specific subset tain rights to their work. That contest’s ment and networking. Cross-pollination of the skills and techniques that rules state in part that those who win already exists between the academic and comprise informatics. Are these the and redeem a prize must license to Top- company-sponsored contests, and be- most important skills, or simply Coder and Google rights to all infor- tween competitors who follow each those that are easiest to measure? mation submitted during the tourna- other’s contests. For example, the IEEE’s Are these timed contests attractive ment, including rights to source code Varela, who works for Google, has inter- [to] a broad population of poten- and other executables (www.topcoder. viewed contestants at Code Jam, and tial participants, or do they select a com/pl/?module=Static&d1=google06& Microsoft’s Ognissanti says Google narrow demographic? Are the con- d2=rules). made an offer to one of the Imagine tests appealing to an audience be- In essence, Ognissanti says, clauses Cup’s top teams after this year’s finals. yond the immediate participants such as these serve to introduce students TopCoder’s Hughes says the objective and their acquaintances? Do the to the often labyrinthine world of IP criteria by which contests compel stu- contests accurately convey—to stu- rights and rewards. He cited a Croatian dents to perform could well provide dents, educators, and the public at Imagine Cup team that created a first- some compulsory, objective evaluations large—the nature of informatics? aid application and then donated the for those seeking employment with lead- (www.vtex.lt/informatics_in_ rights to local hospitals. ing firms. education/htm/INFE071.htm) “They got so much good PR for “I think it started out with the hard- that,” he says. core computer science guys who got in In a less scholarly vein, Kevin Shock- there for the fun of it,” he says. “But, as ey, a blogger for the O’Reilly Network, ltimately, says the ICPC’s Poucher, employers have started asking more and takes Microsoft to task for a legal no- you should consider contests in the more things like, ‘Do you have a Top- tice it issued for the Imagine Cup(www. U same vein as world-class athletic

November/December 2006 IEEE SOFTWARE 101 IN THE NEWS competitions, in that top competitors this sense: An athlete who trains to run changes for the better, and that’s what must dedicate themselves to the pur- the 100-meter dash doesn’t just try to we want to see in ICPC contestants.” suit of total excellence in ways that go run fast. That athlete pays attention to Given the fast-growing ranks of pro- beyond bare coding ability. nutrition, and proper rest, and the most gramming contestants around the “It’s not a matter of finding compa- effective techniques as discovered by his world, it’s also evident that many young nies looking to hire a number of folks,” or her colleagues around the world. At technologists want to make those Poucher says. “It’s an athletic activity in the end of the day, their entire way of life changes for the better themselves.

Funny Business, Serious Business: O’Reilly OSCON 2006

Bart Massey

he 2006 O’Reilly Open Source must participate to add substance and is, after all, a peculiar place, with its own Conference, held in Portland in depth. With the decline of other open- culture, mores, and vision. July, gave me a lot to digest—no, source-developer events in the US—for no, not just the excellent compli- example, the end of the Freenix track of Impressions and highlights mentary food. I left the confer- the Usenix Annual Technical Confer- The conference keynotes were of a T ence chewing over ideas about the ence—OSCON fills an important role as generally high quality. The talks I en- relationships between open source soft- something of a US counterpart to events joyed most featured humorous insights. ware developers, their relationships with such as the Australian linux.conf.au. Damian Conway’s two talks, “The the business community, and the rela- Furthermore, the open source mar- DaVinci Codebase” and “openTalk 2.0,” tionship of the entire technology com- ketplace’s continued maturation has were tour-de-force commentaries. Robert plex to society. brought in a second wave of open source Lefkowitz’s “5 A Day” was a fine piece The conference—larger than ever— entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs are of comic analysis. More serious keynote was, as always, a great deal of fun. drawn mainly from the proprietary fare included Carl Malamud on influ- There were about 2,700 participants arena and seem more interested in pur- encing change at the federal level, and this year, according to OSCON PR person suing their existing strategies than in the original IBM PC team member Dave Suzanne Axtell, up from about 2,100 in open source ideals and community. Un- Bradley on “25 Years of the IBM PC.” 2005. OSCON appears to be meeting its fortunately, preexisting strategies often The tutorial and technical sessions goal of rapid growth quite handily. fare poorly in the open source arena. It ranged from low-level Linux to high- level legal guidance. (For more on the Developers et al. presentations, see http://conferences. The 2006 mix of attendees seemed oreillynet.com/os2006.) much more skewed than in previous The exhibit floor this year captured years, away from open source developers most of the major industry players with and technical types. There was a wide a stake in open source, including Nov- mixture of open source corporate repre- ell, Intel, HP, and Google. IBM donated sentatives, industry managers coming up The open source its exhibit space to showcase open to speed on open source, and folks from marketplace’s source research at Oregon’s two main the wider community satisfying their cu- university centers: Oregon State Univer- riosity about the whole phenomenon. continued maturation sity’s Open Source Laboratory and sev- Therein lies an interesting dilemma. has brought in eral of my open software/hardware stu- For OSCON to grow and to have broad dent groups at Portland State University impact, it must cater to more than just a second wave (the Portland State Aerospace Society, the technically focused developer com- of open source the Software-Defined Radio team, and munity. However, to be a serious confer- entrepreneurs. our X Window System developers). Sun ence instead of a glorified trade show, was also there, continuing last year’s ef- enough of the developer community forts to promote OpenSolaris.

102 IEEE SOFTWARE www.computer.org/software IN THE NEWS

Much of the rest of the exhibit space women attendees I asked about all this, was taken up by start-ups making big about half found it uncomfortable—one OSCON publicity pushes. Many start- so much so that she felt inclined not to ups, such as Greenplum, Laszlo Sys- attend again. tems, and Shopzilla, reminded me a lot I’m hopeful that this development of dot-com-era companies, but with was an anomaly. Axtell suggested that, How to important twists: their products and while some steps will be taken to prevent business plans were clear and under- a repeat at OSCON next year, there’s only Reach Us standable, their marketing was fairly a limited amount O’Reilly can do to con- mainstream and professional looking, trol the speakers’ content without dam- and the level of risk assumed was low. aging the conference. Writers The OSCON “hallway track” was ac- It seems to me that this situation For detailed information on submitting tive as always. I ran into many old arises from the confluence of several articles, write for our Editorial Guidelines friends and famous faces in the corri- streams of change in the open source ([email protected]) or access dors. The usual high level of hospitality world. The mainstream marketers are www.computer.org/software/author.htm. offered by OSCON, including such entering the game, and they tend to use amenities as inflatable lounge chairs in sex as a selling tool. As the open source Letters to the Editor the session areas and continuously development community expands, it ab- Send letters to available free snacks in the exhibit area, sorbs an ever-larger percentage of the greatly facilitated these interactions. young, overwhelmingly male enthusiast Editor, IEEE Software OSCON has long had the tradition of community. Internet culture itself is 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle folks holding concurrent conferences highly sexualized, and this aspect can’t Los Alamitos, CA 90720 and activities, typically at no cost to par- help but seep into the Internet-focused [email protected] ticipants. This year, O’Reilly provided technical community. Given some care- Please provide an email address or daytime on-site space for more of them than ever ful thought and hard work, hopefully phone number with your letter. (hosting, in addition, colocated confer- these factors can be controlled and open ences on Perl, PHP, and Python). One of source can be made a friendlier place for On the Web the more interesting side events was women. Access www.computer.org/software for OSCamp, which Brandon Saunders or- information about IEEE Software. ganized to explore new ideas in open Open source future Subscribe source. OSCamp was run in the Open My report on OSCON 2005 described Visit www.computer.org/subscribe. Space self-organizing format (www. it as “entering the mainstream.” At OS- openspaceworld.com). Although the CON 2006 I began to get a clearer picture Subscription Change of Address event was sparsely attended, the Open of that mainstream and where it might Send change-of-address requests for magazine Space format was a success. lead. It seems unavoidable that the pres- subscriptions to [email protected]. sure of the larger business and social com- Be sure to specify IEEE Software. The “Boys’ Club” munity will change open source, some- The open source community has re- times for the worse. At the same time, Membership Change of Address ceived a lot of criticism for its high gen- peaceful coexistence seems possible in the Send change-of-address requests for IEEE der imbalance, even compared to the near term, and relatively benign integra- and Computer Society membership to rest of the software industry. OSCON de- tion farther out. [email protected]. finitely reflected this imbalance; while I’ve watched with fascination over the no precise registration numbers were past 20 years as open source has grown Missing or Damaged Copies available when I last chatted with Su- from hobbyist sharing of programs to If you are missing an issue or you received a zanne Axtell, my impression was that major industrial significance. As we ap- damaged copy, contact [email protected]. only five to ten percent of the attendees proach the cusp of open source adoption, Reprints of Articles were female. I view with even more fascination the For price information or to order reprints, Sadly, a new development at OSCON future stretching out before us. send email to [email protected] or 2006 might exacerbate this problem. fax +1 714 821 4010. Several presenters’ slides sported sexual- ized images of semiclothed women. In Reprint Permission addition, there was a “booth babe”: an To obtain permission to reprint an article, attractive young woman in a harem out- Bart Massey is an associate professor of computer science at Portland State University, where he teaches and contact the Intellectual Property Rights fit wandering around the exhibit hall researches open source, software engineering, and AI. Contact Office at [email protected]. handing out grapes. Of the several him at [email protected].

November/December 2006 IEEE SOFTWARE 103