Not to say that I am even potentially capable of competing at the world level, but the exact premise the author describes happened to me. I won multiple contests at the university level, finished one spot away from going to the world finals at the region level, but after this performance got me noticed and a job at one of the listed companies, I spend no further time on the contests (granted in order to compete at th…
> This just isn't that useful in the real world.
What if these contests were more of an 8 hour practicum, everyone has their own machine (and each team has a meeting room with whiteboards?). At lunch you have to replace every member on your team with fresh faces who didn't watch anything you did, only get the problem description (subject to change) and any documentation you left in the code.
Probably wouldn't be as fun, but might provide slightly better signalling.
I represented a U.S. school at ICPC world finals twice (the maximum number of times). Just based on what I heard from other contestants and their classmates, it seems like the biggest contributor to the outcomes we see at finals is that some schools take this contest much more seriously than others. So a team at, for example, St. Petersburg State University may spend 20-60 hours/week practicing while a team at Stanfo…
> just being able to write stock algorithms correctly without much thought Outside of a job interview, I don't see why this would be a good idea. If you need a stock algorithm and your environment has a stock implementation, why on earth would you roll your own umpteen zillionth implementation? Sometimes you have an embedded problem or some weird feature of the problem domain that favours a non-stock algorithm. But t…
The problem with reasoning like this is the implicit assumption that getting better at X does not carry over into performing Y. I promise you, if you memorized the top 100 computer algorithms by heart, you would absolutely come out a better programmer. Why? Memorizing computer science algorithms is not like memorizing a random string of numbers. Each unit is connected to other units which strengthen your recall and understanding of completely unrelated algorithms and concepts. Our brains organize information in a hierarchical fashion, and when we learn some algorithm we are strengthening our recall and understanding (connections to other concepts) of the basic building blocks of the algorithms. So, for example, while you may never need to roll your own quicksort, the concept of partitioning a set of items based on a pivot is a fundamental concept that will be re-enforced in the process.
A better title would be "Why do foreign colleges waste so much time on programming contests?"
waste? Programming contests are pretty useful for working on your problem solving skills (algorithmic stuff, figuring out the "simplest" way to solve a problem).
I competed in the acm. It was a complete waste of time. The teams that smashed us had memorized, line for line, C implementations of obscure algorithms that solve specific problems you'll likely never need in building a product. Or if you need the algorithm, you'll look it up and use a library. Look at the solutions of problems from the top 10. I wouldn't hire any of those people.