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Quixey Challenge: Fix a bug in 1 minute to win $100. Refer a winner to win $50.

quixeychallenge.com

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Re: Quixey Challenge: Fix a bug in 1 minute to win $100. Refer a winner to win $50.

#21

Post by weaksauce »

habudibab wrote: post #15
Liron wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea. Check out the video here: http://blog.quixey.com/2011/10/03/quixey-challenge/

Which is staged. I wonder whether the real challenges are in similar style and difficulty. Looking at the problem in the video it would help to just quickly pull out template code and compare it. Would help to have an easier way to know whether this is something I could accomplish or is completely over my head. $100 bucks, I could need those.

similar in scope and, depending on your grasp of the algorithm and python, roughly the same difficulty +/- a little bit.

Re: Quixey Challenge: Fix a bug in 1 minute to win $100. Refer a winner to win $50.

#22

Post by Liron »

theycallhimtom wrote: post #13

Won the $100 :). It took me about 15 minutes start to finish. You have to do 3 practices then wait a bit before you can do the real thing. You are given about 10 lines of code and need to change one line to make it correct. The problems are things like binary search, topological sort, shortest paths, etc.

$400/hour isn't bad :)

Re: Quixey Challenge: Fix a bug in 1 minute to win $100. Refer a winner to win $50.

#23

Post by nfriedly »

kruhft wrote: post #10

I don't really feel like registering for the practices, so how does this work? Do they give you a piece of code that has a bug in it and you're supposed to find it and fix it?

Yea, prettymuch. You have to complete 3 practice runs correctly first, and then you can do the actual challenge. (Over skype, apparently)

The practice runs were all 5-10 lines of python where exactly one line had to be changed or added to correct the bug. I didn't come across any syntax errors, just logic errors, so I finished the practice runs pretty easily despite having almost 0 python experience. (I did miss one because I was too slow though. I found the bug and correctly guessed at the python syntax to fix it, but it took me 67 seconds.)

Re: Quixey Challenge: Fix a bug in 1 minute to win $100. Refer a winner to win $50.

#24

Post by translocation »

Haha, just won- and the algorithm happened to be one that was posted on the front page of HN earlier this week! It just goes to show, there's no reason to get work done when you can be reading articles on HN- it could turn out to be important.

But I have to say, I haven't heard of Quixey before- it looks like they're building a search engine for software. Are they just trying to replace platform-specific app markets, or is it something trickier than that?

Re: Quixey Challenge: Fix a bug in 1 minute to win $100. Refer a winner to win $50.

#25

Post by Liron »

translocation wrote: post #24

Haha, just won- and the algorithm happened to be one that was posted on the front page of HN earlier this week! It just goes to show, there's no reason to get work done when you can be reading articles on HN- it could turn out to be important. But I have to say, I haven't heard of Quixey before- it looks like they're building a search engine for software. Are they just trying to replace platform-specific app markets,…

Right now, all your devices are magic wands. It would be better if they were genies. We do wish-to-spell conversion.

Re: Quixey Challenge: Fix a bug in 1 minute to win $100. Refer a winner to win $50.

#28

Post by gibybo »

I also just won (gibybo) and am pleased with the process. Overall it was smooth and what I expected, although it would have been cool if the challenge problem I got had sample input/output like some of the practice ones.

My strategy for those who might benefit: I checked out the profiles of all the previous winners today and found that the challenge question was always one of three. I looked up the algorithms and practiced by implementing a python version of each, noting where the tricky parts were. Then when I entered the challenge I used my reference python version and compared them. I was a bit lucky in that the challenge code was roughly laid out the same way as I happened to do it earlier.

Re: Quixey Challenge: Fix a bug in 1 minute to win $100. Refer a winner to win $50.

#30

Post by eridius »

artoonie wrote: post #7
greenpizza13 wrote: post #5

Doing this ONLY is python is a shame.

Agreed, I just lost because of improper python syntax. Hardcore C would be more fun, with memsets and frees such that bugs can exist in memory management.

Yeah. I'm no Python programmer, so I screwed up one of the practices by writing `set.push(node)` instead of `set.add(node)`. Luckily that didn't matter on the challenge itself (except for the wasted seconds checking all my assumptions about what the python functions were doing).
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