4 ms·

As a russian software developer from Moscow I can say that this contest is not well-known in Russia software community and it is completely not obvious that thi

by custo15 11y ago

As a russian software developer from Moscow I can say that this contest is not well-known in Russia software community and it is completely not obvious that this contest is prestigious in some way. It may give you some points on the interview, but is not key point at all. Actually, most of russian software developers even do not know about this contest. Wrapping up, it is very, very weak statement that this contest is "very prestigious in Russia" and many people "are spending a lot of time to prepare". I think that ITMO have a good base for this contest is a more reasonable point. Sorry my broken English.

x4m 11y ago
I'm dev from Yekaterinburg and I'd disagree. Devs here like to watch ICPC. But it is student championship. Most of my colleagues just are not students. Mature programmers prefer ICFPC (:
- custo15 11y ago
  I'm agree that there's a passion among developers for such contests in Moscow, too. But my point is that this is not something "prestigious" and as a consequence a reason why many people "spending a lot of time" for it. I mean you will not get any major benefits for investing in this, or something. It's interesting but not must-have for a professional developer. And that's why I not see a lot of people around coding contest-like tasks instead of, for example, contibuting to open source or doing freelance job, etc.
  - x4m 11y ago
    That`s true, according to Peter Norvig "Being good at programming competitions correlates negatively with being good on the job" http://www.catonmat.net/blog/programming-competitions-work-performance/ http://www.catonmat.net/blog/programming-competitions-work-p...
    - minwcnt5 11y ago
      You forgot to add the key qualifier "at Google". That says nothing about how being good at programming competitions correlates with being good on the job in general. It's also kind of common sense that if you spend a lot of time working on something that's not really related to your industry job that won't be as good at said industry job as if you spent that time, say, writing open source machine learning software. People just assume that programming == software engineering, but programming competitions are a lot more similar to math competitions than they are to real world jobs.
    - mzl 11y ago
      Norvigs claim can quite probably be credited to selection bias. See http://erikbern.com/2015/04/07/norvigs-claim-that-programming-competitions-correlate-negatively-with-being-good-on-the-job/ http://erikbern.com/2015/04/07/norvigs-claim-that-programmin... for some nice graphs.
minwcnt5 11y ago
I don't think this or other contests (Code Jam, IOI, TopCoder, Code Forces etc.) are well-known among the software community anywhere. Just like math competitions, they are very much dominated by students who were prodigies in math and computer science. Most of the highly successful competitors grew up being part of their country's math and informatics olympiad training programs, so they have years of practice. Average university students or software developers have little reason to take an interest because they just don't have the skills to compete at that level. That said, within the competition community, the ICPC is in fact very prestigious, including in Russia, and teams do spend hundereds of hours training. You're representing your entire university, you only have two years of eligibility so winning is very difficult, and it's the only major team-based competition in this format (with the team sharing a single computer), which adds a camaraderie aspect that made it more enjoyable for me than individual competitions.
elfnt 11y ago
dude, you are just plain wrong in this. any of the (few) major software organizations in Russia know very well what ACM/icpc are. the winners definitely get a preferred treatment in the interview pipeline.
- custo15 11y ago
  If you mean companies such Yandex, Mail, ABBYY (but not Kaspersky, huh) or something like that - I agree. Winners of ACM will get "preferred treatment", definetely. This will not affect their salaries a lot, but that's true. But you missed my point. I argue that ACM is something extremely prestigious and people practicies a lot in mass. This is not true. And companies such Yandex and Mail is not a some kind of great place to work. But if I will interview a candidate and know he participated (not won) in ACM I will be much more interested in him. But there's not so many such candidates, mm..? )

by custo15 11y ago

x4m 11y ago

I'm dev from Yekaterinburg and I'd disagree. Devs here like to watch ICPC. But it is student championship. Most of my colleagues just are not students. Mature programmers prefer ICFPC (:

custo15 11y ago
I'm agree that there's a passion among developers for such contests in Moscow, too. But my point is that this is not something "prestigious" and as a consequence a reason why many people "spending a lot of time" for it. I mean you will not get any major benefits for investing in this, or something. It's interesting but not must-have for a professional developer. And that's why I not see a lot of people around coding contest-like tasks instead of, for example, contibuting to open source or doing freelance job, etc.
- x4m 11y ago
  That`s true, according to Peter Norvig "Being good at programming competitions correlates negatively with being good on the job" http://www.catonmat.net/blog/programming-competitions-work-performance/ http://www.catonmat.net/blog/programming-competitions-work-p...
  - minwcnt5 11y ago
    You forgot to add the key qualifier "at Google". That says nothing about how being good at programming competitions correlates with being good on the job in general. It's also kind of common sense that if you spend a lot of time working on something that's not really related to your industry job that won't be as good at said industry job as if you spent that time, say, writing open source machine learning software. People just assume that programming == software engineering, but programming competitions are a lot more similar to math competitions than they are to real world jobs.
  - mzl 11y ago
    Norvigs claim can quite probably be credited to selection bias. See http://erikbern.com/2015/04/07/norvigs-claim-that-programming-competitions-correlate-negatively-with-being-good-on-the-job/ http://erikbern.com/2015/04/07/norvigs-claim-that-programmin... for some nice graphs.

minwcnt5 11y ago

I don't think this or other contests (Code Jam, IOI, TopCoder, Code Forces etc.) are well-known among the software community anywhere. Just like math competitions, they are very much dominated by students who were prodigies in math and computer science. Most of the highly successful competitors grew up being part of their country's math and informatics olympiad training programs, so they have years of practice. Average university students or software developers have little reason to take an interest because they just don't have the skills to compete at that level. That said, within the competition community, the ICPC is in fact very prestigious, including in Russia, and teams do spend hundereds of hours training. You're representing your entire university, you only have two years of eligibility so winning is very difficult, and it's the only major team-based competition in this format (with the team sharing a single computer), which adds a camaraderie aspect that made it more enjoyable for me than individual competitions.

elfnt 11y ago

dude, you are just plain wrong in this. any of the (few) major software organizations in Russia know very well what ACM/icpc are. the winners definitely get a preferred treatment in the interview pipeline.

custo15 11y ago
If you mean companies such Yandex, Mail, ABBYY (but not Kaspersky, huh) or something like that - I agree. Winners of ACM will get "preferred treatment", definetely. This will not affect their salaries a lot, but that's true. But you missed my point. I argue that ACM is something extremely prestigious and people practicies a lot in mass. This is not true. And companies such Yandex and Mail is not a some kind of great place to work. But if I will interview a candidate and know he participated (not won) in ACM I will be much more interested in him. But there's not so many such candidates, mm..? )