We Have a Winner: Programming Contests Show Impressive Growth
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in the news Features Editor: Dale Strok ■ [email protected] 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).