

Standings in 38th Annual World Finals of the ACM International Collegiate - nikita
http://icpc.baylor.edu/scoreboard/

======
stack_underflow
Competing in algorithmic programming competitions is an extremely eye-opening
experience. I competed in 3 ICPC regionals during my time as an undergrad and
realized that my level of knowledge in core/fundamental algorithms was (and
still is) an absolute joke compared to some of my competition.

I realize I didn't exactly put a lot of time into practicing and learning new
material, but now that I've graduated I'm hoping to practice more and
eventually try raising my rating on TopCoder. If anything, training for ICPC
drilled the basics of algorithms and data structures into my head and lead me
to find tons of excellent resources for improving in these competitions (and
consequently, programming/problem solving in general).

~~~
gleenn
Seriously, having competed in only 1 regional ICPC myself, I was blown away at
the level of knowledge of some of the students. Some kids were coming in from
high school with serious programming skills. Makes me sad when I go back to
work now and never get to use any of these interesting algorithms.

~~~
boxysean
NYU team coach here writing from Russia. :)

Indeed, most of the top competitors have been practicing since high school. We
were lucky to assemble a team that has been training well before.

MIT's team consists of freshmen who are still in good training since their
national high school math olympiad trainings from their respective countries.

~~~
itsnotvalid
What puzzled me is that training for high schools varies so much that not all
students interested was given some basic help.

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itomatik
There is an online judge with problems from the competition:
[https://icpc.kattis.com/problems](https://icpc.kattis.com/problems)

Live comments about the problems from the legendary Petr Mitrichev:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rjGwA7ChLJr2ibHVbt-
GirDp...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rjGwA7ChLJr2ibHVbt-
GirDpbCjSCG8DkKpfHHdc-ws/pub)

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mzl
Mirror if the site is hard to reach:
[http://static.kattis.com/icpc/wf2014/](http://static.kattis.com/icpc/wf2014/)

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supahfly_remix
Does scoring well on these contests typically translate into being a good
coder in business? (I'm genuinely curious, not implying anything). It
certainly means one is bright. Would one be perpetually bored not finding
coding for money challenging?

~~~
jblz
I can't speak for typical or usual, but, I attended 2 ACM ICPC regionals
(southeast) & am gainfully employed in software. Last I knew, my two teammates
were as well.

Of course raw coding talent & algorithmic skill are paramount, but what's neat
about this contest is there is only one keyboard per team, so things like
these quickly set teams apart:

* ordering the problems according to difficulty

* architecting a solution before implementing it

* concise, effective, communication

* using brute force when elegance adds time

* knowing your environment like the back of your hand

* ability to thrive under pressure

In my opinion, skills like these translate really well to success in the fast-
paced, agile shops that are flourishing in many markets.

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nikita
There are several companies in the valley that are going hard for ICPC
winners. MemSQL is certainly one of them. In the past contestants were mostly
going to big companies like Google. Hopefully we will see more and more of the
top competitors joining startups.

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lelf
Those are at T-1h. The actual results are different. 1st place St. Petersburg
State University with 7 problems solved.

[https://twitter.com/ICPCNews](https://twitter.com/ICPCNews)

~~~
tellarin
The results there (original link) are final for some time now. T-1 only
applies until the end of the competition.

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dpiers
I think the amazing thing here is that the top 18 teams solved as many
problems as Stanford, CMU, and UC Berkeley combined, and those schools are
currently 3 of the top 4 ranked CS undergraduate programs in the US.

~~~
hatred
To be frank, competitive programming is a niche field which requires years of
practice.

Imagine it like solving problems in mathematics , the better your brain is
used to solving similar problems in the past, the faster you will end up
solving the relevant task at hand.

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xentronium
These standings are pre-freeze, so not final, right?

