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Goodbye to Google Code Jam

codingcompetitions.withgoogle.com

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Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#111

Post by zsims »

polskibus wrote: post #100
gregdoesit wrote: post #94

For anyone wondering about the underlying reason for these events suddenly being cancelled: it is connected to Google laying off the team that organized these four events, as part of their January job cuts. I covered more details I could find a few weeks ago [1] [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/google-coding-competition...

That is so bad. They could’ve left 1 or 2 for the benefit of CS as a whole. They are undercutting their own future talent pool this way.

Unless they see Bard as fulfilling that.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#112

Post by devit »

startupsfail wrote: post #7

In general Online Rounds of coding competitions are no longer going to work. As GPT-4 had been shown to outperform humans on the coding competition tasks. You can have it assisted, but this quickly becomes a “who can afford more compute” competition. RIP coding competitions. Incidentally, World Finals: up to 2020, it was held in a location in the US or Europe, and has been online since. Pretty incredibly, Gennady Kor…

GPT-4 is competely incapable of solving any advanced problem in coding or mathematics competitions, and usually doesn't even appear to correctly understand the problem statement (assuming the solutions are not in the training set, of course).

Just try submitting the IOI 2022 and IMO 2022 problems.

Obviously it still outperforms the average human, since the average human has no knowledge of mathematics or computer science whatsoever.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#113

Post by devit »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #67
iliekcomputers wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chess has had engines 100x better than magnus carlsen for years and it's not dead. people who have fun giving these competitions will continue having fun, while people who don't will keep crying that they're useless or dead or whatever.

That requires a clear ruleset. In chess it's very clear where to draw the line: no help allowed, you're on your own with your brain. Where should one draw the line in Coding competitions? No ChatGPT? I guess most people would agree. No Copilot? Same as ChatGPT as the products seem to converge. No Googling? That too will converge to something close to ChatGPT. If you can't look up information during a contest anymore,…

In-person competitions simply don't allow any Internet access, you have to use their own machines and you can't bring any data or printed material or electronic device.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#114

Post by nonethewiser »

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…

> It is like any other sport

Do you consider competitive programming a sport?

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#115

Post by astura »

insightcheck wrote: post #106
gregdoesit wrote: post #94

For anyone wondering about the underlying reason for these events suddenly being cancelled: it is connected to Google laying off the team that organized these four events, as part of their January job cuts. I covered more details I could find a few weeks ago [1] [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/google-coding-competition...

I appreciated the quote from your article that: "Based on information from insiders, Google’s coding competitions engaged more than 300,000 software engineers external to Google, annually. These coding competitions assisted in the hiring of thousands of software engineers each year, who were directly sourced from these events." These views reflect that Google Code Jam was a very significant source for recruitment. In…

"People, mostly children and very young adults, talking confidently about topics they have no idea about" can basically be Reddit's official slogan.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#116

Post by aflag »

nonethewiser wrote: post #114
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…

> It is like any other sport Do you consider competitive programming a sport?

If playing Fortnite and sc2 are considered sports, why not?

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#117

Post by GTP »

nonethewiser wrote: post #114
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…

> It is like any other sport Do you consider competitive programming a sport?

Well, if we now consider videogames a form of sport called esports, I don't see why we can't do the same for competitive programming. But I think OP was referring more about the competitive side, regardless of whether it qualifies as a sport or not.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#118

Post by yodsanklai »

insightcheck wrote: post #106
gregdoesit wrote: post #94

For anyone wondering about the underlying reason for these events suddenly being cancelled: it is connected to Google laying off the team that organized these four events, as part of their January job cuts. I covered more details I could find a few weeks ago [1] [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/google-coding-competition...

I appreciated the quote from your article that: "Based on information from insiders, Google’s coding competitions engaged more than 300,000 software engineers external to Google, annually. These coding competitions assisted in the hiring of thousands of software engineers each year, who were directly sourced from these events." These views reflect that Google Code Jam was a very significant source for recruitment. In…

> In contrast, when I searched about whether Code Jam was a significant part of Google's recruitment strategy, one of the top results on Reddit on r/cscareerquestions really underplayed the recruitment part

Google has a very standardized recruitment procedure. Once you're in the pipeline, you're judged with the same standards as everybody else (algo interview, system design...). Whether you're a Code Jam champion or not. Where Code Jam could help is to get contacted by a recruiter, but a simple referral could be enough for that, so it's not that hard to enter their recruitment pipeline.

Also, Code Jam problems are much harder than what you'd get in a coding interview, so it's not the best use of your preparation time to land a job at Google. Leetcode problems are more similar to what they ask.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#119

Post by GuB-42 »

c7b wrote: post #61
balaji1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they don't mention why it's ending?

GPT?

We just did a competitive coding event and one of us based his strategy on ChatGPT, which was allowed. That got him through the qualification rounds, but then ended in the middle of the pack, which I think matched his skills as a non-ChatGPT coder. So, not a significant advantage, and none of the top performers used ChatGPT.

The thing is, most of the times, ChatGPT gives a wrong answer, so you need to look at the code, understand it, point out the mistakes and have ChatGPT output the corrected code. Sometimes manual correction is required, and sometimes, rewording of the question is required. It won't do everything for you unless you are particularly lucky, you still need to be a competent coder to work with it.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#120

Post by c7b »

gregdoesit wrote: post #94

For anyone wondering about the underlying reason for these events suddenly being cancelled: it is connected to Google laying off the team that organized these four events, as part of their January job cuts. I covered more details I could find a few weeks ago [1] [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/google-coding-competition...

Couldn't this be confusing cause and effect? The article seems to insinuate that the product was cancelled because the team was laid off to save costs. But couldn't there be an unrelated reason why Google wanted to cancel the product, which then lead to the decision to lay off the team?

I could imagine that with the advent of the likes of GPT, Google may have concluded that the competition has lost its utility in identifying talented coders to recruit.

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