Inside Google: Photos from Google Code Jam
One hundred of the best and brightest coders (all dudes, natch) competed today in Google's Manhattan headquarters for head geek honors and their share of $151,000 in prize money. Google flew the contestants to NYC from around the world. The winner will be announced tonight at 8 p.m. Until then, have a look at these purty pictures I took during the competition today. Code Jam is Google's annual online challenge that invites nimble-fingered geeks to solve a series of algorithmic problems. According to Google's Manhattan engineering director Craig Nevill-Manning, the goal of Code Jam is to get people passionate about computer science. He says Google doesn't use the contest as a hiring mechanism, though contestants that do well "would get a step up in the interview process" if they were to apply. The contestants this year hailed from 23 different countries. The Russian Federation had a whopping 33 coders in the finals, making them the dominant country. China was second with 12 coders, and Poland was third with 11. The United States was on their somewhere, about seventh or eighth place I think. India didn't have any contestants. A reporter from the Christian Science Monitor by the name of Ben Arnoldy told me the reason Russia and Poland do so well is they have schools that offer classes specifically for contests such as these. If you're not all about the Code Jam photos, check out these photos from an earlier trip to Google's headquarters. |
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Comments (4)
Where are all the chicks?
Posted by XY | October 27, 2006 4:19 PM
Posted by joe schmoe | October 28, 2006 1:53 AM
Yes, I'm well aware that the citizens of eastern European countries are historically better at mathematics. I wasn't being flippant. Ben's point was simply that Russia and Poland, as compared to say, India, have schools devoted to teaching students how to do well in these kind of international competitions. I don't know if that's true, I just thought it was interesting and likely, especially given that the former Soviet satellite countries were very vested in impressing other nations with their academic achievements. I used to work in Russia, and I know that for a fact.
Posted by Steve Bryant | October 28, 2006 5:14 PM
Steve, just for the record I was saying Arnoldy was being rather flippant, not you. I agree, there could very well be classes specifically geared toward these competitions, so that could be part of the reason the Russians did so well, but I also suspect that poor education in the U.S. is partly to blame, too. Also, I would think these competitions would be about very basic problem solving and algorithm design -- i.e. the basics of computer science -- so they would actually be good measures of general programming skill. That is, my initial impression is that doing well in this competition actually is a good indicator of one's programming skill. It's sort of like if there were an international math competition. Arnoldy might say the Russians have classes specifically designed for competitions such as these. But I'd say why not? Competitions such as these are good indicators of math ability. Therefore, these Russian classes, which Arnoldy implies are a form of cheating, are teaching good general math skills... So I just wonder how that's cheating.
Posted by joe schmoe | October 30, 2006 11:02 AM