China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest • Hacker News Board

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#11

Post by nico » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 3:14 AM UTC

shalmanese wrote: post #3

People from developing countries have more incentive to participate in these competitions as the effort/reward ratio is greater. This is what significantly skews the numbers.

Weird, a comment replying to the above disappeared. Anyway, just wanted to share this:

- http://www.gapminder.org/videos/gapcasts/gapcast-6-chile-a-d...

Pretty OT, but important to notice that "developing country" is not an easy definition.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#12

Post by Locke1689 » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 3:14 AM UTC

shalmanese wrote: post #3

People from developing countries have more incentive to participate in these competitions as the effort/reward ratio is greater. This is what significantly skews the numbers.

Yes. I compete in the ACM ICPC and TopCoder competitions and here's the deal. Top Chinese competitors in these areas get jobs doing these competitions. They literally get paid by the Chinese government to practice algorithm writing and competitive programming all day every day. US competitors are just college students like me who have things like school to deal with. Given this situation, it is unsurprising that Russian and Chinese coders win almost every year.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#13

Post by Locke1689 » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 3:17 AM UTC

Could someone change this title? TopCoder is an NSA supported competitive programming site. While I guess competitive programming could be consider MIT-style hacking, this is not cracking and it's definitely not run by the NSA.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#14

Post by DaniFong » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 3:24 AM UTC

To intercept the expected comments that these contests have nothing to do with real world skill (in programming, not 'cracking'), Steve Newman, cofounder of Writely, was a top competitor on TopCoder, as was Adam De'Angelo, previously CTO of Facebook. Craig Silverstein, an ACM ICPC programming competition world champion, was Director of Technology and employee #1 at Google.

This does refer to the algorithmic competitions specifically, the correlation between achievement in the design/development competitions is less clear.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#15

Post by colonhyphenp » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 3:27 AM UTC

socratees wrote: post #10

I doubt its an hacking contest. The title is misleading, and the competition is just a regular one except that "TopCoder" is backed by NSA.

Yeah the title is definitely misleading. The word "hacking" isn't even mentioned in the article besides in the title. Replace "hacking contest" with "programming competitions" and "NSA" with "NSA sponsored" and you have a more accurate title.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#16

Post by mquander » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 3:47 AM UTC

Locke1689 wrote: post #13

Could someone change this title? TopCoder is an NSA supported competitive programming site. While I guess competitive programming could be consider MIT-style hacking, this is not cracking and it's definitely not run by the NSA.

I strongly agree. The NSA has an extremely tangential role in how this is happening. TC has many sponsors, all of whom are interested in hiring extremely sharp programmers, and the NSA participates as a member of that set. This particular contest was sponsored by the NSA, and the next might be sponsored by Intel or AMD. That's just how they pay the bills.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#17

Post by tlrobinson » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 3:51 AM UTC

socratees wrote: post #10

I doubt its an hacking contest. The title is misleading, and the competition is just a regular one except that "TopCoder" is backed by NSA.

Yeah but with "China", "NSA", and "hacking" in the title it must be an interesting article.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#18

Post by mquander » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 3:52 AM UTC

bbg wrote: post #7

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 ou…

As far as I know, the NSA just gets some free advertising space, and before the arena matches you get the opportunity to chat with a member of the sponsoring corporation/organization, so they get to tell some really good programmers about NSA job perks.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#19

Post by joshhart » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 3:58 AM UTC

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…

They are referring mainly to the algorithm's competition, which is dominated by current competitors in the IOI and ICPC.

There are indeed design and development competitions, but for the most part, Topcoder isn't what you think it is.

Re: China Embarrasses US in TopCoder Contest

#20

Post by j2d2 » Mon, Aug 03, 2009, 4:10 AM UTC

Locke1689 wrote: post #13

Could someone change this title? TopCoder is an NSA supported competitive programming site. While I guess competitive programming could be consider MIT-style hacking, this is not cracking and it's definitely not run by the NSA.

It's a copy of the article's title...