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China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

computerworlduk.com

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Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#2

Post by le_dominator »

This may be slightly tangential , but the report indicated that 80% of the entrants to the competition were between the ages of 18 and 24 years old.

After heading over to topcoder.com I found it curious that this site is yet another in a long string of businesses that offers up "contests" with "prizes" for doing work.

In the design community this is known as spec work and the reaction to it ranges from being highly frowned upon to pitchforks-and-torches style anger.

No!Spec (http://www.no-spec.com) is the industry's main sounding board against these types of "competitions", so I won't rehash those points here.

The article's implied "gee-whiz these are wonderkids!" approach to the entrants didn't sit too well with me. The fact that entrants were largely between 18 and 24 years old seems more to do with a lack of professional experience (evidenced by partaking in spec work), than some magic ability of younger people to be able to do compelling work in technology.

I think it's more probable that those grizzled old guys with beards are too busy getting paid for their labor to partake in a lottery, hence the skewed demographics. Also, it would be natural to see more entrants win in countries where the US dollar exchange rate benefits taking a risk of getting no money. It isn't indicative of a lack of talent inside the US.

Disclosure: I'm in my late 20's.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#4

Post by radioactive21 »

another point is that in the US the notion of "Hacking" is still seen as negative or criminal.

Something else is that in that age group in the US people are about to graduate or graduating so if they are really good at math/science/engineering they have already either been picked up my companies or in the process of getting hired. Why does this matter? Becuase if you are going to or are working for a company im pretty sure they dont want you to participate in any event about hacking.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#5

Post by paulbaumgart »

le_dominator wrote: post #2

This may be slightly tangential , but the report indicated that 80% of the entrants to the competition were between the ages of 18 and 24 years old. After heading over to topcoder.com I found it curious that this site is yet another in a long string of businesses that offers up "contests" with "prizes" for doing work. In the design community this is known as spec work and the reaction to it ranges from being highly f…

Thanks for pointing this out. That's a perspective on these types of competitions I've never considered, but it seems like you're exactly right:

"TopCoder also sells software licenses to use the growing body of components that have been developed in competition. Finally, TopCoder acts as an outsourcing center, allowing companies to farm out custom design and development tasks to TopCoder competitors."

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopCoder#TopCoder_as_a_business )

Sounds pretty sleazy to me.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#6

Post by paulbaumgart »

radioactive21 wrote: post #4

another point is that in the US the notion of "Hacking" is still seen as negative or criminal. Something else is that in that age group in the US people are about to graduate or graduating so if they are really good at math/science/engineering they have already either been picked up my companies or in the process of getting hired. Why does this matter? Becuase if you are going to or are working for a company im prett…

I think the phrase "hacking contest" was how the author of the article chose to describe it. The TopCoder competition page doesn't mention the word at all: http://www.topcoder.com/tc ; probably exactly for the reason you describe.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#7

Post by bbg »

I have recently begun participating in the TopCoder 'Arena', where I've made some code that could be of absolutely no monetary value to anyone (except to me, as training). Actually, it's a lot of fun.

Still, I wonder about this company.

It has some connection to the NSA, as advertised on their web page and elsewhere. Does anyone know more details about this relationship? In particular, what does the NSA aim to get out of it?

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#9

Post by socratees »

le_dominator wrote: post #2

This may be slightly tangential , but the report indicated that 80% of the entrants to the competition were between the ages of 18 and 24 years old. After heading over to topcoder.com I found it curious that this site is yet another in a long string of businesses that offers up "contests" with "prizes" for doing work. In the design community this is known as spec work and the reaction to it ranges from being highly f…

I can't disagree with you. But we can't dismiss the fact that the world's more competetive place that it was before. And the quality of education in the US esp. maths/science should to be on par with the quality of education in developing countries.
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