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So you've competed at the highest level of programming competitions, but you also seem to be doing work on Upwork [1]? That seems pretty unusual... [1] https:/

So you've competed at the highest level of programming competitions, but you also seem to be doing work on Upwork [1]? That seems pretty unusual... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34935440#34935783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34935440#34935783

NotOscarWilde 4y ago
I do not know the OP and I cannot prove or disprove any claims they make about their life, but I can indirectly attest to the following: I was competing around 2008-2010 at the regional level of the ICPC in Central Europe and indeed, our team's approach at the time had some memorization aspects as well. (Our university had a significant amount of support for the competitions, with some coaching as well as a course that consisted of weekly practice contests.) We never won anything, so I would not dare claim we competed at a highest level. As far as I remember, most of our preparation was about "recognition" -- how to tell if a greedy approach is optimal, or how to recognize if a dynamic approach fits. And of course, how to write a program quickly and not forget any corner cases. I remember having daydreams back then of memorizing a max-flow algorithm or potentially even a linear programming solver and then quickly retyping it at a competition. Flows and LPs indeed solve a lot of stuff (LPs are P-complete). I admit I never did that, and it wouldn't be a winning strategy there anyway. PS: Oh, and contrary to the poster above, most of my friends from the university days would be and indeed were great hires, judging by their jobs at Google, Microsoft and elsewhere. Some others, such as the actual ICPC winners from our university, ended up pursuing academic careers -- but I dare not say they would have a bad time in the industry.
- geraldwhen 4y ago
  Central Europe and Russia take competitive programming far more seriously than the U.S., from what my professors told me. It took very little effort to take first in a university wide competition and join the team that represented the school and went on to win the region. I suspect most Central European teams would sweep the USA.
geraldwhen 4y ago
…yes? Lol. I’ve moonlighted on upwork for easy cash in the past. Not all of us made 200k/year in our first job out of college a decade and a half ago. Yes, I was part of a USA team in an international competition. I won our region. For what it’s worth, competitive programming isn’t like sports. The playing field isn’t that good, and the amount of work it takes to make it past regionals and to an international competition is waaaay less than any sport or even something like chess I suspect.
- bragger 4y ago
  The field is definitely weak. I got a top 50 result in round 3 (but not top 25) of my first GCJ, my second programming contest ever, the first being the one time I showed up for one in college, and that score was ahead of some ICPC and IOI gold medalists. My only preparation being doing a few practice problems from prior years and making a blank C++ file with some includes, an empty main function, and "using namespace std;". I think it helped to have some background in time-constrained thinking from high school math contests, but I was never particularly good at those, either.
  - versteegen 4y ago
    Let's admit it (your username does), you're very good. Code Jam seems to reward problem solving and maths/CS ability far more than programming ability, relative to other coding competitions. The most important thing is analysing the problem, not memorising standard algorithms. That's why you could do so well with so little competition experience. And why I have stuffed up so many GCJ rounds. That said, sometimes the field really is weak. I finished in the top 1000 on the first Distributed Code Jam and got a t-shirt just because... less than 1000 qualifying contestants were willing to even figure out the novel setup and compete. (Actually I did badly.)
    - geraldwhen 4y ago
      Most people will not be able to solve longest common substring without being familiar with the problem ahead of time, and many programming problems can be broken down or transformed into similar algorithms. Identifying root applicable algorithms and reproducing them quickly is what you study when competing in programming competitions.

NotOscarWilde 4y ago

I do not know the OP and I cannot prove or disprove any claims they make about their life, but I can indirectly attest to the following: I was competing around 2008-2010 at the regional level of the ICPC in Central Europe and indeed, our team's approach at the time had some memorization aspects as well. (Our university had a significant amount of support for the competitions, with some coaching as well as a course that consisted of weekly practice contests.) We never won anything, so I would not dare claim we competed at a highest level. As far as I remember, most of our preparation was about "recognition" -- how to tell if a greedy approach is optimal, or how to recognize if a dynamic approach fits. And of course, how to write a program quickly and not forget any corner cases. I remember having daydreams back then of memorizing a max-flow algorithm or potentially even a linear programming solver and then quickly retyping it at a competition. Flows and LPs indeed solve a lot of stuff (LPs are P-complete). I admit I never did that, and it wouldn't be a winning strategy there anyway. PS: Oh, and contrary to the poster above, most of my friends from the university days would be and indeed were great hires, judging by their jobs at Google, Microsoft and elsewhere. Some others, such as the actual ICPC winners from our university, ended up pursuing academic careers -- but I dare not say they would have a bad time in the industry.

geraldwhen 4y ago
Central Europe and Russia take competitive programming far more seriously than the U.S., from what my professors told me. It took very little effort to take first in a university wide competition and join the team that represented the school and went on to win the region. I suspect most Central European teams would sweep the USA.

geraldwhen 4y ago

…yes? Lol. I’ve moonlighted on upwork for easy cash in the past. Not all of us made 200k/year in our first job out of college a decade and a half ago. Yes, I was part of a USA team in an international competition. I won our region. For what it’s worth, competitive programming isn’t like sports. The playing field isn’t that good, and the amount of work it takes to make it past regionals and to an international competition is waaaay less than any sport or even something like chess I suspect.

bragger 4y ago
The field is definitely weak. I got a top 50 result in round 3 (but not top 25) of my first GCJ, my second programming contest ever, the first being the one time I showed up for one in college, and that score was ahead of some ICPC and IOI gold medalists. My only preparation being doing a few practice problems from prior years and making a blank C++ file with some includes, an empty main function, and "using namespace std;". I think it helped to have some background in time-constrained thinking from high school math contests, but I was never particularly good at those, either.
- versteegen 4y ago
  Let's admit it (your username does), you're very good. Code Jam seems to reward problem solving and maths/CS ability far more than programming ability, relative to other coding competitions. The most important thing is analysing the problem, not memorising standard algorithms. That's why you could do so well with so little competition experience. And why I have stuffed up so many GCJ rounds. That said, sometimes the field really is weak. I finished in the top 1000 on the first Distributed Code Jam and got a t-shirt just because... less than 1000 qualifying contestants were willing to even figure out the novel setup and compete. (Actually I did badly.)
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    Most people will not be able to solve longest common substring without being familiar with the problem ahead of time, and many programming problems can be broken down or transformed into similar algorithms. Identifying root applicable algorithms and reproducing them quickly is what you study when competing in programming competitions.