
In the Olympics of Algorithms, a Russian Keeps Winning Gold - khmel
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428610/in-the-olympics-of-algorithms-a-russian-keeps-winning-gold/
======
Sirupsen
Petr is no longer ranked #1 on popular competitive programming sites such as
Topcoder [1] and Codesforce [2]. 18-year-old Gennady Korotkevich [3] from
Belarus ranks better on both, and has also won the most medals in the
International Olympiad in Informatics ever, he was awarded his first silver
medal when he was 11.

Nonetheless, Petr is a legend in this field.

[1]: <http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank>

[2]: <http://codeforces.com/ratings>

[3]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Korotkevich>

~~~
sukuriant
I would like to see him compete longer. His volatility is still somewhat high
and he may sink below Petr yet.

------
droz
Seems somewhat nonsensical to claim the man is the "best computer programmer
in the world", (ignoring for a moment the notion that there is such a thing)
since only a small percentage of computer programmers in the world even
participate in these events and that the "best computer programmer in the
world" couldn't care less about such competitions.

~~~
khmel
It was quote from MIT Technology review paper. Objectively I agree. TopCoder
is very well known competition, also Petr won Facebook's Hacker Cup. But this
is not the whole World. There're also ACM competitions, International computer
science olympiads and many other corporate contests.

~~~
mynameishere
And there's also the real world where the "best programmer" isn't entering
pointless contests.

~~~
sltkr
Ah yes. The real world. Where people with pointless skills get hired by
Google, even though the ability to design and implement clever algorithms is
an irrelevant programmer skill.

~~~
mcherm
It is NOT an irrelevant programmer skill. It is a programmer skill which is
relevant for certain projects and irrelevant to others.

Being the best in the world at _anything_ is usually a good sign. Given two
candidates for a programming position who appeared to have roughly equal
skills based on the interview, but where one had held the world record in
weightlifting and the other hadn't, I'd hire the one with the world record in
weightlifting. The skill is _utterly_ irrelevant to _all_ programming
projects, but the dedication needed to become the best in the world at
something... that's valuable.

------
sakopov
I'm Russian and feeling liiiitle bit proud right about now. :) I'm his age and
we're the last generation of soviet-era school graduates. Russian educational
system is in one enormously epic crapper right now and people like this guy
are going to be a real rarity in Russia.

~~~
runT1ME
That's sad. I've had nothing but positive experiences working with Russians
(both in the US and working with some remotely).

This is possibly both racist (nationalist/) and anecdotal, but I've noticed
that russian programmers think more like their US counterparts than some other
ethnic groups that were educated in their home countries...

~~~
khmel
The current high school level in Russia is not so bad guys.

These are results of the last International Olympiad in Informatics (2012,
Italy):

1\. China - 4 gold out of 4 - total score 1847

2\. Russia - 4 gold out of 4 - total score 1765

3\. USA - 3 gold and 1 bronze - total score 1637

<http://www.ioi2012.org/competition/results-2/>

------
damian2000
Interesting that he shifted from Pascal to C# in 2005. Anyone know if these
contests allow you to use any language you want?

~~~
xentronium
Pascal is still very popular for teaching programming in post-soviet
countries.

Rules for languages differ by contest. I believe all of them accept C and C++
solutions, most also accept java. Erlangists and Lispers are going to have a
bad time, though.

------
khmel
there's high density of post-Soviet block people in TopCoder ranking - out of
TOP10 7 are from Russia, Belarus and Poland. Other 3 - China, Japan, South
Africa <http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank>

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Human potential wasted by communism.

~~~
createuniverses
Are you joking? Or perhaps you didn't read the comment. Those programmers CAME
FROM communist countries.

------
cosminro
Here's some more background around Petr [http://www.quora.com/Petr-
Mitrichev/What-it-is-like-to-meet-...](http://www.quora.com/Petr-
Mitrichev/What-it-is-like-to-meet-or-know-Petr-Mitrichev)

And some discussion around Russia and China dominating in coding contests
[http://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-from-Eastern-Europe-
and-C...](http://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-from-Eastern-Europe-and-China-
now-dominate-coding-competitions)

~~~
plinkplonk
from the first 'quora' link

"Petr almost never submits any solution without having a rigorous proof even
when good mathematical intuition is enough and the proof is hard."

wow! reading this brings home how much I still have to learn. Humbling.

------
genuine
It's because it gets so cold there, so the two things to do are to drink or
stay inside and code. ;)

Much props to Russian developers!

------
dikshun
Khmel, did you and Petr graduate from the same university? Quite the alumni
base they are building there.

~~~
khmel
yes dikshun, university is the same, but I studied journalism there, not
math&physics :)

------
SagelyGuru
It seems a great pity that Google puts so much talent to work on improving the
search engine algorithms ´to deliver the most relevant result first´ and then
ruins it all by putting some cheap schmuck´s site at the top, no matter how
irrelevant, just because he paid them a few bucks.

~~~
rorrr
Try adblock.

Google's ads are the last on my list, when it comes to being invasive or
annoying.

------
ropz
Topcoder is such a great site that it can't even program a Captcha to let you
in when you get it right :0>

~~~
lathamcity
I didn't read the comments first, spent about ten minutes on it. From a
cursory glance, I think it comes down to the following lines:

In modal.register.js:100, 128, 337

$("#veriImg").attr("src", "/present/captchaImage.action?t=" + new
Date().getTime());

It doesn't seem like the expected value of the captcha ever actually gets
registered on the server side.

My one idea of stopping before the Ajax request and setting the verification
code equal to an empty string to try to match a null/undefined on the server
side didn't work.

It's possible that, in some really obvious error, the server makes its own
request based on a current timestamp to get the captcha value to match against
and uses a later timestamp, but the time difference because of latency means
that I can't test that without guessing a bunch of times.

~~~
ropz
From that I would assume that they think they have enough coders, and don't
need any more. After all, if you've got over 400,000 subjects, the top 10% are
going to be pretty good, especially if they keep competing for the same
prizes.

------
Jabbles
"which he posts as videos online"

Does anyone know of similar videos in English?

~~~
khmel
He has YouTube channel. Thse are few videos from there:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKuMGhPHqOI>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HX2QQIj3GY>

