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The Hyperpublic Programming Challenge
- davidmorgan 16y agoThis challenge sounds fantastic! Great job -- I really want the prizes, too.
- jyri 16y agoThis is great. We're working on a startup that could use an open location database such as Hyperpublic. Keep it up!
- jordancooper 16y agoearly API key available here... http://hyperpublic.com/developers http://hyperpublic.com/developers
- igoros 16y ago... a little too obvious? Funny how all those accounts saying nice things about hyperpublic have been created within the last hour.
- jordancooper 16y agothe dude who wrote that started jaiku...fyi
- thedob 16y agoWe thought this would be fun to make and fun to work on for an hour or two. Let us know if you have any feedback or questions.
- jordancooper 16y agowho else has done awesome challenges? Greplin had a cool one...seatgeek...who else?
- amitklein 16y agoProgramming Competition Sites: TopCoder, CodeChef, Project Euler For Jobs: Quora (http://www.quora.com/challenges http://www.quora.com/challenges), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php http://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php)
- duck 16y agoAnother fun one is: http://www.coderloop.com/ http://www.coderloop.com/
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- teraflop 16y agoDropbox: http://www.dropbox.com/jobs/challenges http://www.dropbox.com/jobs/challenges
- zach 16y agoITA has some clever challenges (including an archive of past puzzles): http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/work-at-ita/hiring-puzzles.html http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/work-at-ita/hiring-puzzle... But then that's the thing, a lot of places have these kind of programming challenge puzzles. What's the closest to a Putnam for programming challenges? I know Facebook is trying to position their Hacker Cup this way, but it had a rough start that makes you wonder if it's the best thing for Facebook to run on its own. It seems like there's an opportunity for a prominent and widely-sponsored event run by a third party. I presume the sponsors would love a window of exclusivity to see the best results from recruitable competitors. Even without the obvious recruiting benefits, it would at least capture the imaginations of aspiring programmers worldwide.
- abecedarius 16y agoI'd love to see something like the ICFP contest (in its better years), made shorter somehow. The 2006 one was especially awesome.
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- leif 16y agoNice succinct contest, I like it. Problems are good, graded difficulty (don't want to discourage anyone with the first problem), solutions don't take terribly many lines of code. Low barrier to entry makes for a fun contest. Problem 2 is on par with a medium-hard ACM ICPC question, probably one of the harder questions I've seen in a startup-made contest. High five.
- Technophilis 16y agoDid you mean a US ACM-ICPC Regional ? Because I have never seen basic DP problems in a north-eastern European regional or an ACM-ICPC final.
- leif 16y agoyes. these problems wouldn't make sense in the finals
- andrewcooke 16y agoThe second one isn't that hard once you recognise the kind of problem it is; then it's just a case of writing out a standard solution (I don't want to be more explicit in case I spoil it for someone else). I have done a few of these puzzles; the ones I remember were for Quora and STA. Of those, this had least code and was quickest to write - it was fun to think about, but I didn't really learn much doing it. In comparison, the Quora question involved various optimisations in C code (for speed) which was a bit of a time-waster - I think this tests a wider range of knowledge much more quickly. But my favourite was an STA question on inferring relatives from DNA which meant learning something new (high dimensional data; particularly locality sensitive hashing). Personally I would prefer to see all the questions at the start, so I can see how interesting everything is, and how much time is involved. I don't really understand the advantage (to the people asking) of having them chained. PS I find the spammy comments on this thread very odd. Are Hyperpublic themselves using sock puppets? That really makes you look bad.
- thedob 16y agoThanks for the feedback, and I agree that if we ever create more problems it'd be a good idea to help people learn along the way. Re the spammy comments, our entire team are longtime HN users so we all know those hurt way more than they help, but think one of our "fans" wanted to "help" a little too much. Love their enthusiasm though.
- andrewcooke 16y agoSo who won? Where is the announcement?
- thedob 16y agoDid a writeup including winners at blog.dougpetkanics.com
- andrewcooke 16y agoGreat; thanks.
- andrewcooke 16y agoOK, just found the email from you (from yesterday) in my spam folder which may explain why I was asking. Sorry about that!
- noraabousteit 16y agoAwesome prizes - would love to win the the one month desks at Hyperpublic HQ in NYC or (and?) one year free Dropbox account.
- ruthie_burda 16y agooooo I want a free Dropbox pro account!!!
- CarolEatsAgain 16y agoHey Hyperpublic, kudos for keeping things interesting
- rbrooklyn 16y agoHey Hyperpublic, rad contest idea!
- jah 16y agoAt the risk of looking like a complete idiot, I think your solution to problem #2 is incorrect. Update: I was wrong. It's kind of scary how sure I was of my incorrect solution.
- igoros 16y agoI got their answer. Note that there is a wrong "solution" to this problem that looks like it might be right. It is a very standard problem, by the way. Most books on algorithms will have the solution.
- georgieporgie 16y ago> Most books on algorithms will have the solution. What would you call this algorithm? I solved the second problem, but my solution is brute-force, and I'd like to see a better way to do it.
- igoros 16y agoAnswer in rot13: Gur grpuavdhr vf pnyyrq "qlanzvp cebtenzzvat". Naq, guvf cnegvphyne ceboyrz vf pnyyrq gur "pbva punatr ceboyrz".
- georgieporgie 16y agoGreat, thanks!
- leif 16y agolbh pna whfg guvax bs vg nf onpxgenpxvat naq zrzbvmr lbhe shapgvba yngre qnfu guvf fubhyq or rdhvinyrag gb gur qc bcra cnera ohg v unirag pbzcyrgryl jbexrq bhg gur qc fb znlor abg dhrfgvba znex pybfr cnera
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
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- sblom 16y agoI've published my python solutions for reference, kibitzing, critique, etc. on github: https://github.com/sblom/hyperpublic-challenge https://github.com/sblom/hyperpublic-challenge Anyone else published solutions? I'd love to see one in Clojure.
- mukyu 16y agoI wonder how many people solve it and then do not send in their key. I know I'm not. I cannot be the only one that was more interested in doing the challenge than the rewards.