

Ask HN: What Hackers do for Programming Contests? - ideamonk

Programming contests have become something like a way to pass time and keep ourselves away from boredom for me and my friends. Having tried lots of easy problems... we are getting stuck at the tough ones. Fellow Hackers what do you suggest for improving our skills gradually? Suggest great texts, problems, algorithms, approaches, mindsets and your personal views at programming contests in general.
For a person who hires, is programming contest style recruitment really fruitful?
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davidw
Why don't you create a product instead of frittering away time with (IMO)
meaningless contests? It can be open source if you just want to learn. Or help
out with some existing open source product.

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ideamonk
well let me tell you my real experience... this time i tried to do something
google code of summer... now as for open source projects... frankly if I don't
get involved exclusively into one... all of them seem to be just another
different different worlds in themselves. Besides why dig so much to fix a
small problem and understand big piece of software for long time to improve it
by a nanosec. What rush we get by programming contest problems is the "ACRush"
as my friend puts it... its amazing to see your fast code getting accepted
"AC" by an online judge.. and then amazing to see how a faster program gets
you a better rank... these joys arn't there in world of freely contributing to
open source... this joy is like a high.. which makes us crave to be able to
solve MORE and MORE :) anyways forget that my point is won't it be amazing if
fixes/problems of opensource projects are also converted into programming
contest style problems and you get to get the fastest and the best code for
open source projects and we get the RUSH as we call it ? and later you can
always pick us up for a job ;P

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rsa
try topcoder.com

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ideamonk
yeah thats the big boss of programming rush!

