
Quora - Programming Challenges - mshafrir
http://www.quora.com/challenges
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jasonwilk
Smart people, have bad ideas.<http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html>

I'm not saying this app is entirely a bad idea. I had Zuckerberg telling me
for 20 minutes that this site is awesome. I just became ridiculously bored
after the first week of using it and I'm concerned the founding team isn't
gaining real-life perspective as to whether or not the idea is any good.

Perfect example: Someone asked a question the other day "What does Max Levchin
look for when hiring", and guess who responded to the question? You guessed
it, Max Levchin himself. In the real world, this wouldn't happen and as the
user population grows, the celebs roll out and the people looking for
questions about brushing their dog's teeth roll in. I don't see the value
beyond it's current elitist state.

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retro
I disagree that this is a bad idea. I think it's a good idea that hasn't been
done well and it remains to be seen whether quora is up to the challenge.
(btw, if anyone has an invite, i'd love to check out the site:
padlane@gmail.com).

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jasonwilk
You challenge my point and you don't even have an account. Argument Fail

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andrewcooke
so, did anyone try this, this evening? i need to go out for a run, and then
get some sleep, but i've got an initial result for the "duct" question that's
taking 6s on my laptop, but it's quite possible i have some bugs (ie i may be
completely wrong). i should have written some tests on the way... :o)

and if anyone is thinking of trying, i'd recommend it - it's not a huge amount
of code and requires at least one smart idea (i think - had me bashing my head
against a wall for a while...).

[if anyone wants to compare results - just the final number, no spoilers
please - then drop me an email]

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yoga69
Gave it a brief thought. What I see is a TSP on a grid graph. Maybe I missed
some detail. Do you see a better idea?

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andrewcooke
yes, i think that's a valid way of looking at it - the grid adds some extra
properties to a general graph which you might be able to exploit to get better
efficiency.

[but i don't really want to spoil things for quora by discussing a solution
here, i was more interested in swapping final results so that people could
check they have the right answer]

ps i believe my solution is ok, now, after checking it at lunch time, but it's
a little slower than theirs, which is making me think i have missed something.

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senthil_rajasek
Python seems to be the preferred programming language, I find it interesting
given that the founding team is from Facebook which I hear was originally
built using a lot of PHP.

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three14
I see some of you have accounts. Anybody willing to explain how this is
different from Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers? I didn't find the About page
enlightening. Thanks!

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adora
Funny enough, there's a whole category called How Quora is different from X?
[http://www.quora.com/t/2410/How_is_Quora_different_from_X?q=...](http://www.quora.com/t/2410/How_is_Quora_different_from_X?q=how+is+quora+)

It's a good rundown. What's your email? I'll send you an invite.

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three14
aryeh-yc@yucs.org

Thanks!

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adora
cool, sent! :)

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btipling
I guess when tiny unknown Yahoo Answer clone based startups with nothing to
offer except a lot of worthless stock options that will probably never be
worth anything put up an interesting programming puzzle, talented engineers
will magically fall out of the sky and beg on their hands and knees to get a
chance to work there.

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adora
Have you used Quora? And/or seen who is using Quora? :) They have built what
is simply the most addictive Q&A site. It remains to be seen if the usefulness
persists once users start coming en masse. However, the potential is
definitely there.

Also the team is very well-respected (previously at Facebook) and I think A
LOT of people would love to work and learn from them. Maybe even for free for
a limited time.

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amund
Just started using it, and it is among the snappiest (latency-wise) web
applications I've tried.

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wmblaettler
It appears to be running on Amazon EC2 with Cloudfront for a CDN.

