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Goodbye to Google Code Jam

codingcompetitions.withgoogle.com

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Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#41

Post by TacticalCoder »

krackers wrote: post #34
krackers wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As GPT-4 had been shown to outperform humans on the coding competition tasks On the same frontpage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35297067 Food for thought. Also by their own paper it has only a codeforces rank of 392 which is below 5th percentile.

Also a cute prompt I saw on the same twitter thread ``` This is a variant of the monty hall problem: Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. IMPORTANT: All the doors are transparent. Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who clearly knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to…

> I wonder how gpt-4 does.

The problem is that as soon as people started tricking ChatGPT 3 into problems like that, the correct answers are now being used to train the next versions and are going to be part of the dataset.

So GPT-4 or GPT-5 may get the answer right, but that still wouldn't mean anything.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#42

Post by aristidb »

krackers wrote: post #34
krackers wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As GPT-4 had been shown to outperform humans on the coding competition tasks On the same frontpage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35297067 Food for thought. Also by their own paper it has only a codeforces rank of 392 which is below 5th percentile.

Also a cute prompt I saw on the same twitter thread ``` This is a variant of the monty hall problem: Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. IMPORTANT: All the doors are transparent. Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who clearly knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to…

GPT 4 gave me this answer:

In this variant of the Monty Hall problem, since all the doors are transparent, you can clearly see what is behind each door. This changes the nature of the problem entirely. The element of uncertainty, which is present in the original Monty Hall problem, is no longer a factor.

In this scenario, if you pick door No. 1 and see a car behind it, you should stick with your choice, as there is no advantage to switching. If you pick door No. 1 and see a goat behind it, you should switch to door No. 2, as you can clearly see the car behind it.

Since you can see what's behind the doors, the probability of winning the car is no longer based on conditional probability, and the original Monty Hall paradox does not apply. Instead, your decision is simply based on your observation of what's behind each door.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#43

Post by ajkjk »

schrodinger wrote: post #16
ajkjk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPT-4 had been shown to outperform humans on the coding competition tasks citation?

[flagged]

Oh, I looked and didn't find anything. I thought about writing something about how I thought it wasn't true but decided it would be better to just ask if they had a reference for it. also, it's an extraordinary claim, so pretending like it's something everybody already knows is pretty weird.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#44

Post by Barrin92 »

rvz wrote: post #32
paulpauper wrote: post #12

There is no need for coding competitions anymore. The competition is Leetcode. The prize: a high paying job.

Indeed. It is a product of decades of quantitative easing, near zero interest rates and a tech bubble that needed to collapse. Thanks to GPT-4 and other LLMs, this have driven the need for coding competitions and interview tests like Hackerrank, Leetcode, Codility to zero and having almost no use since everyone will just Ch(e)atGPT the coding interview or competition.

>almost no use since everyone will just Ch(e)atGPT

pretty easily solved with covid-era online exam surveillance, i.e. camera on, screen shared and live explanation of your solution. But honestly not even that is necessary because cheating on online tests isn't new and companies are aware of it. ChatGPT didn't invent someone else taking a test for you.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#45

Post by slantedview »

adam_arthur wrote: post #35
actuator wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a joke? It is like any other sport or Olympiad, it involves solving faster, accurately and potentially of problems you haven't seen before. There is no direct correlation between competitive programming like CodeJam/ICPC and leetcode. They don't target the same audience at all. I couldn't get to the top of these but I do admire people who do, they are some of the absolutely brilliant people I have worked wi…

Depends what you’re hiring for. Firstly the interview should be structured with an aim to maximize correlation between success on the interview and success on the job. If you’re not thinking along these lines you aren’t even playing the game. For most startups, the right criteria to screen for is pace and quality of code, plus work ethic. You can ask a relatively easy coding problem, whether it be algorithmic/data st…

Can you elaborate on the distinction between coding competency and leetcoding? I agree with you that leetcode is terrible but I don’t quite follow how your suggestion is very different in practice.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#46

Post by dilyevsky »

gfd wrote: post #9

Topcoder will also be having their final TCO this year: https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/113201 Google Code Jam and TCO were the two biggest onsite competitive programming event that's not targeted at students. This is a huge blow to the sport.

Wow topcoder too? What a shame. End of an era

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#48

Post by arynda »

gfd wrote: post #9

Topcoder will also be having their final TCO this year: https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/113201 Google Code Jam and TCO were the two biggest onsite competitive programming event that's not targeted at students. This is a huge blow to the sport.

I miss Topcoder. Funny story I went back through all my old SRMs and found one where I was placed in the same room with none other than mzuckerberg. He even unsuccessfully challenged my code and I in turn challenged his with a test he hadn’t considered, and he lost all his points!

This was, of course, a couple of years before Facebook was even thought of.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#49

Post by ekianjo »

actuator wrote: post #26
pclmulqdq wrote: post #10

Competitive coding has always been a bit of a joke, but it's a great entry vector for kids to get introduced to programming (and eventually software engineering). I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this, though. I have always been suspicious that the existence of the game of competitive coding has been used to kind of justify the "leetcodification" of the tech interview circuit, and (IMO) that can't go away soon…

Why is it a joke? It is like any other sport or Olympiad, it involves solving faster, accurately and potentially of problems you haven't seen before. There is no direct correlation between competitive programming like CodeJam/ICPC and leetcode. They don't target the same audience at all. I couldn't get to the top of these but I do admire people who do, they are some of the absolutely brilliant people I have worked wi…

And just like any other sport it has virtually no usefulness in real life
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