I love programming competitions, and they have provided me with some of the most valuable experience I've ever had. I spent a couple of years working on progra

I love programming competitions, and they have provided me with some of the most valuable experience I've ever had. I spent a couple of years working on programming problems with my university's ACM contest team, and I've never had a chance to work with a keener group of hackers. We spent hours and hours a week in the computer lab practicing, figuring out difficult bugs, improving each other's code, and just working on random side projects. It's a bit intimidating to work alongside world-finalist programmers, who sometimes seem to be able to pull solutions out of thin air, but after a while, you start to pick up on how everyone on the team has a unique and valuable way to approach problems. And that's the most valuable thing. Since I've left school, I've learned great stuff about business, design, people, and usability. But I'll never again have such a pure immersion into the art of coding.