8 ms·

Google Code Jam 2011 Language Popularity

57 points by hanszeir 15y ago

zmitri 15y ago
I think its surprising to see such little growth in number of users using python from last year. http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/languages http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/languages vs http://www.go-hero.net/jam/10/languages/0 http://www.go-hero.net/jam/10/languages/0 I answered all the questions using python and was surprised to see the majority of the top coders (you know, the guys who solved everything in ~30 minutes) use C++ and Java. I had the impression that the difference in python's runtime would be made up for how much more succinctly you can code in it and by all the syntactic sugar... but I guess not. In fact, I noticed some of the top guys have various built in libraries to help them reduce their time spent on input handling and various solver interfaces. The auto generated code from those libraries dwarves the actual solution code in size.
- greyman 15y ago
  Maybe that's because the verboseness of C++ or Java isn't really that much of a problem, since the experienced coders can usually type quickly, and moreover, most of the programming work is thinking, not typing.
  - random42 15y ago
    Also, the experienced coders also already have template macros for frequently used code snippets, like loop, conditional statements, comparisions, sorting etc., making doing trivial things in C++/Java, as trivial as doing them in Python (or other high level language).
    - scorpion032 15y ago
      Yup. Some of the TopCoders have their own templates that include substituting "for" with "F" and the like. They'd have solved these kinds of questions for years, and have ready templates for parsing the input and output.
  - scorpion032 15y ago
    The verboseness, because of the need to type more code is never a major problem. Verboseness is indicative of the abstractions that are exposed, and that being at a lower level than necessary is the problem because you don't just have to deal with the problem at hand, but also the holes in languages. With years of practice in a similar area, many people would have their own libraries to abstract those language shortcomings. In general, the verbosity because of the bad abstraction levels is always a problem, because different people using it will have their own versions to patch them up.
- BasDirks 15y ago
  C(++)/Java are really popular in most coding competitions, but I don't know if that necessarily says anything. Recently a very decent competition (anyone remember?) was won by someone coding in Pascal.
  - olalonde 15y ago
    Somewhat educated guess, but it probably has to do with the fact that those contests offer well defined, immutable specifications. No need to iterate a lot or refactor much.
    - killedbydeath 15y ago
      Curious what you are trying to say. I program mostly in Python, but never considered ease of refactoring to be its strength. I felt more comfortable changing code in C++ mostly because of the static typing providing additional correctness guarantees at run-time.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
  - Tichy 15y ago
    I think TopCoder only allows some languages (including Java), maybe that is part of the reason.
vlisivka 15y ago
Wow - five coders use bash as their favorite language (including me :) ).
lawn 15y ago
Perfect score with brainfuck, that's pretty funny.
- kentbuckle 15y ago
  Props to the befunge coder as well
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  And...CMake? What?
olalonde 15y ago
Basically, the 2 most hated languages on HN are the 2 most popular for the Google Code Jam?
- scorpion032 15y ago
  Just like how McDonalds always does more business than FreshGreens(Or whatever that is).
Tichy 15y ago
I just looked at the top scoring solution, written in C++, and a Java solution next to mine in the scoreboard, and I can only say that I am really happy with my choice of Ruby. As for the top scorer, I can't help but wonder if that skill even translates well to the real world?
- agile_zergling 15y ago
  Hang out on the topcoder message boards and decide for yourself.
BasDirks 15y ago
Look at this guy: http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/name/Soultaker http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/name/Soultaker Used Haskell, PostScript, Python, Prolog, Perl, J, Brainfuck, C, each once for one problem.
Dn_Ab 15y ago
I was curious as to what proportion of each language achieved a perfect score. A quick script [1] sorted by Percent which reached perfect score and then by qualified resulted in the below - mean of advanced/lang is: ~90%, most (26) langs either achieved 100% entry or around 80% (14) ). [|("PostScript", (1, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("Brainfuck", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("Golfscript", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("COBOL", (1, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("Octave", (3, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.6666666667|])); ("Shell", (5, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.6|])); ("dc", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|])); ("sed", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|])); ("R", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|])); ("OCaml", (21, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.380952381|])); ("F#", (17, [|1.0; 0.8235294118; 0.3529411765|])); ("D", (6, [|1.0; 0.5; 0.3333333333|])); ("Prolog", (3, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.3333333333|])); ("J", (3, [|1.0; 0.6666666667; 0.3333333333|])); ("Clojure", (17, [|1.0; 0.9411764706; 0.2941176471|])); ("Haskell", (118, [|1.0; 0.906779661; 0.2457627119|])); ("C++", (5700, [|1.0; 0.9080701754; 0.2022807018|])); ("ActionScript", (5, [|1.0; 0.8; 0.2|])); ("Lua", (12, [|1.0; 0.75; 0.1666666667|])); ("Pascal", (111, [|1.0; 0.8738738739; 0.1621621622|])); ("Python", (1658, [|1.0; 0.8805790109; 0.1447527141|])); ("Ruby", (259, [|1.0; 0.8918918919; 0.1351351351|])); ("Lisp", (26, [|1.0; 0.8076923077; 0.1153846154|])); ("C", (671, [|1.0; 0.8032786885; 0.1117734724|])); ("Java", (2652, [|1.0; 0.8465309201; 0.1052036199|])); ("C#", (710, [|1.0; 0.8309859155; 0.0985915493|])); ("Perl", (155, [|1.0; 0.8258064516; 0.09677419355|])); ("MATLAB", (11, [|1.0; 0.8181818182; 0.09090909091|])); ("Scala", (35, [|1.0; 0.8; 0.08571428571|])); ("Groovy", (13, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.07692307692|])); ("Javascript", (30, [|1.0; 0.6666666667; 0.06666666667|])); ("GO", (16, [|1.0; 0.8125; 0.0625|])); ("PHP", (166, [|1.0; 0.765060241; 0.05421686747|])); ("Visual Basic", (32, [|1.0; 0.78125; 0.03125|])); ("Assembly", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("AWK", (3, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("WRAPL", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Standard ML", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Objective-C", (6, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("TCL", (3, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Mercury", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Befunge", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Fortran", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Factor", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("CMake", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("LOLCODE", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("LOGO", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Boo", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Erlang", (5, [|1.0; 0.8|])); ("Scheme", (7, [|1.0; 0.5714285714|]))|] [1] str |> Array.map (fun s -> let spl = s.Split('\t') (spl.[0] , let scspl = spl.[spl.Length - 1].Split('/') in scspl.[0], scspl |> Array.map (fun sc -> float sc / float scspl.[0] ))) |> Array.sortBy(fun (_,(_,sc)) -> if sc.Length = 3 then -sc.[2] else 1./sc.[1])
neutronicus 15y ago
I tried to use Haskell, and I think that choice bit me (not Haskell's fault, I hasten to add). I saw the correct solutions right away, but I was nowhere near good enough at recognizing the causes of type errors and I/O in general to produce them in the amount of time I had (I started late). C'est la vie. Learning experience.
ianl 15y ago
I think its important to note that many coding competitions historically only allow C/C++/Java. There is advantage in that you can use many hacks in these languages to get around certain issues quickly if your an innovative person (which you have to be to do the contest questions).
pshapiro 15y ago
Why was C++ so popular?
- Garbage 15y ago
  Speed IMO.
- rednum 15y ago
  C++ and java seems to be two languages allowed in all algorithmic competitions and people are used to it. I think reasons for which C++ is the dominant one are a bit historical - for example when I started participating in those contests, all my friends used C++ and recommended me to learn it too (though now I think I'd stick with java; and in gcj I used common lisp).
orangecat 15y ago
The country distributions are interesting: Python was used much more frequently in the US, while India favors Java and China favors C++.
zbanks 15y ago
When I started, I was thinking about using JS both "for the lulz" and because I'm comfortable enough with it that it wouldn't be a hindrance, like LOLCODE or Befunge. I went with python instead because I assumed I'd need to squeeze as much efficiency as possible out of my programs. For this round, these fears were completely unwarranted. All of the problems, except the second, were trivially O(n). (#2 wasn't worth optimizing, but it was possible) Does anyone have experience with the next round? Is speed still not really an issue?
spullara 15y ago
So did Google choose C++/Java/Python as their standard languages or are they just the natural standard languages of the industry? Was there any push by Google to those 3 languages aside from developers knowing that is what they use internally?
- scorpion032 15y ago
  Google doesn't care what language you use, or in fact even if you compute it manually. All they need is a output file that confirms with their output. - You can provide, whatever the sources. These are of course, the standard industry choices these days. Except there is a huge bias for C++, as for most competitors, that is a standard language.
scorpion032 15y ago
Seems to indicate Haskell is 7 times as popular as Clojure.
scorpion032 15y ago
Here is my (succinct) solution for the Q1: https://gist.github.com/960549 https://gist.github.com/960549
- Scaevolus 15y ago
  Elegant code golf? :D https://gist.github.com/961961 https://gist.github.com/961961
bugsy 15y ago
I enjoy seeing a positive number in the column for number of contest entries written in brainfuck.

57 points by hanszeir 15y ago

I think its surprising to see such little growth in number of users using python from last year. http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/languages http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/languages vs http://www.go-hero.net/jam/10/languages/0 http://www.go-hero.net/jam/10/languages/0 I answered all the questions using python and was surprised to see the majority of the top coders (you know, the guys who solved everything in ~30 minutes) use C++ and Java. I had the impression that the difference in python's runtime would be made up for how much more succinctly you can code in it and by all the syntactic sugar... but I guess not. In fact, I noticed some of the top guys have various built in libraries to help them reduce their time spent on input handling and various solver interfaces. The auto generated code from those libraries dwarves the actual solution code in size.

greyman 15y ago
Maybe that's because the verboseness of C++ or Java isn't really that much of a problem, since the experienced coders can usually type quickly, and moreover, most of the programming work is thinking, not typing.
- random42 15y ago
  Also, the experienced coders also already have template macros for frequently used code snippets, like loop, conditional statements, comparisions, sorting etc., making doing trivial things in C++/Java, as trivial as doing them in Python (or other high level language).
  - scorpion032 15y ago
    Yup. Some of the TopCoders have their own templates that include substituting "for" with "F" and the like. They'd have solved these kinds of questions for years, and have ready templates for parsing the input and output.
- scorpion032 15y ago
  The verboseness, because of the need to type more code is never a major problem. Verboseness is indicative of the abstractions that are exposed, and that being at a lower level than necessary is the problem because you don't just have to deal with the problem at hand, but also the holes in languages. With years of practice in a similar area, many people would have their own libraries to abstract those language shortcomings. In general, the verbosity because of the bad abstraction levels is always a problem, because different people using it will have their own versions to patch them up.
BasDirks 15y ago
C(++)/Java are really popular in most coding competitions, but I don't know if that necessarily says anything. Recently a very decent competition (anyone remember?) was won by someone coding in Pascal.
- olalonde 15y ago
  Somewhat educated guess, but it probably has to do with the fact that those contests offer well defined, immutable specifications. No need to iterate a lot or refactor much.
  - killedbydeath 15y ago
    Curious what you are trying to say. I program mostly in Python, but never considered ease of refactoring to be its strength. I felt more comfortable changing code in C++ mostly because of the static typing providing additional correctness guarantees at run-time.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
- Tichy 15y ago
  I think TopCoder only allows some languages (including Java), maybe that is part of the reason.

vlisivka 15y ago

Wow - five coders use bash as their favorite language (including me :) ).

lawn 15y ago

Perfect score with brainfuck, that's pretty funny.

kentbuckle 15y ago
Props to the befunge coder as well
FaceKicker 15y ago
And...CMake? What?

olalonde 15y ago

Basically, the 2 most hated languages on HN are the 2 most popular for the Google Code Jam?

scorpion032 15y ago
Just like how McDonalds always does more business than FreshGreens(Or whatever that is).

Tichy 15y ago

I just looked at the top scoring solution, written in C++, and a Java solution next to mine in the scoreboard, and I can only say that I am really happy with my choice of Ruby. As for the top scorer, I can't help but wonder if that skill even translates well to the real world?

agile_zergling 15y ago
Hang out on the topcoder message boards and decide for yourself.

BasDirks 15y ago

Look at this guy: http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/name/Soultaker http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/name/Soultaker Used Haskell, PostScript, Python, Prolog, Perl, J, Brainfuck, C, each once for one problem.

Dn_Ab 15y ago

I was curious as to what proportion of each language achieved a perfect score. A quick script [1] sorted by Percent which reached perfect score and then by qualified resulted in the below - mean of advanced/lang is: ~90%, most (26) langs either achieved 100% entry or around 80% (14) ). [|("PostScript", (1, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("Brainfuck", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("Golfscript", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("COBOL", (1, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("Octave", (3, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.6666666667|])); ("Shell", (5, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.6|])); ("dc", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|])); ("sed", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|])); ("R", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|])); ("OCaml", (21, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.380952381|])); ("F#", (17, [|1.0; 0.8235294118; 0.3529411765|])); ("D", (6, [|1.0; 0.5; 0.3333333333|])); ("Prolog", (3, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.3333333333|])); ("J", (3, [|1.0; 0.6666666667; 0.3333333333|])); ("Clojure", (17, [|1.0; 0.9411764706; 0.2941176471|])); ("Haskell", (118, [|1.0; 0.906779661; 0.2457627119|])); ("C++", (5700, [|1.0; 0.9080701754; 0.2022807018|])); ("ActionScript", (5, [|1.0; 0.8; 0.2|])); ("Lua", (12, [|1.0; 0.75; 0.1666666667|])); ("Pascal", (111, [|1.0; 0.8738738739; 0.1621621622|])); ("Python", (1658, [|1.0; 0.8805790109; 0.1447527141|])); ("Ruby", (259, [|1.0; 0.8918918919; 0.1351351351|])); ("Lisp", (26, [|1.0; 0.8076923077; 0.1153846154|])); ("C", (671, [|1.0; 0.8032786885; 0.1117734724|])); ("Java", (2652, [|1.0; 0.8465309201; 0.1052036199|])); ("C#", (710, [|1.0; 0.8309859155; 0.0985915493|])); ("Perl", (155, [|1.0; 0.8258064516; 0.09677419355|])); ("MATLAB", (11, [|1.0; 0.8181818182; 0.09090909091|])); ("Scala", (35, [|1.0; 0.8; 0.08571428571|])); ("Groovy", (13, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.07692307692|])); ("Javascript", (30, [|1.0; 0.6666666667; 0.06666666667|])); ("GO", (16, [|1.0; 0.8125; 0.0625|])); ("PHP", (166, [|1.0; 0.765060241; 0.05421686747|])); ("Visual Basic", (32, [|1.0; 0.78125; 0.03125|])); ("Assembly", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("AWK", (3, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("WRAPL", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Standard ML", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Objective-C", (6, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("TCL", (3, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Mercury", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Befunge", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Fortran", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Factor", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("CMake", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("LOLCODE", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("LOGO", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Boo", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Erlang", (5, [|1.0; 0.8|])); ("Scheme", (7, [|1.0; 0.5714285714|]))|] [1] str |> Array.map (fun s -> let spl = s.Split('\t') (spl.[0] , let scspl = spl.[spl.Length - 1].Split('/') in scspl.[0], scspl |> Array.map (fun sc -> float sc / float scspl.[0] ))) |> Array.sortBy(fun (_,(_,sc)) -> if sc.Length = 3 then -sc.[2] else 1./sc.[1])

neutronicus 15y ago

I tried to use Haskell, and I think that choice bit me (not Haskell's fault, I hasten to add). I saw the correct solutions right away, but I was nowhere near good enough at recognizing the causes of type errors and I/O in general to produce them in the amount of time I had (I started late). C'est la vie. Learning experience.

ianl 15y ago

I think its important to note that many coding competitions historically only allow C/C++/Java. There is advantage in that you can use many hacks in these languages to get around certain issues quickly if your an innovative person (which you have to be to do the contest questions).

pshapiro 15y ago

Why was C++ so popular?

Garbage 15y ago
Speed IMO.
rednum 15y ago
C++ and java seems to be two languages allowed in all algorithmic competitions and people are used to it. I think reasons for which C++ is the dominant one are a bit historical - for example when I started participating in those contests, all my friends used C++ and recommended me to learn it too (though now I think I'd stick with java; and in gcj I used common lisp).

orangecat 15y ago

The country distributions are interesting: Python was used much more frequently in the US, while India favors Java and China favors C++.

zbanks 15y ago

When I started, I was thinking about using JS both "for the lulz" and because I'm comfortable enough with it that it wouldn't be a hindrance, like LOLCODE or Befunge. I went with python instead because I assumed I'd need to squeeze as much efficiency as possible out of my programs. For this round, these fears were completely unwarranted. All of the problems, except the second, were trivially O(n). (#2 wasn't worth optimizing, but it was possible) Does anyone have experience with the next round? Is speed still not really an issue?

spullara 15y ago

So did Google choose C++/Java/Python as their standard languages or are they just the natural standard languages of the industry? Was there any push by Google to those 3 languages aside from developers knowing that is what they use internally?

scorpion032 15y ago
Google doesn't care what language you use, or in fact even if you compute it manually. All they need is a output file that confirms with their output. - You can provide, whatever the sources. These are of course, the standard industry choices these days. Except there is a huge bias for C++, as for most competitors, that is a standard language.

scorpion032 15y ago

Seems to indicate Haskell is 7 times as popular as Clojure.

scorpion032 15y ago

Here is my (succinct) solution for the Q1: https://gist.github.com/960549 https://gist.github.com/960549

Scaevolus 15y ago
Elegant code golf? :D https://gist.github.com/961961 https://gist.github.com/961961

bugsy 15y ago

I enjoy seeing a positive number in the column for number of contest entries written in brainfuck.