

Quixey Challenge: Fix a bug in 1 minute to win $100. Refer a winner to win $50. - quixey
http://quixeychallenge.com

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foob
I just won (#7 - foob) and I felt the need to post here to tell people that
the person I spoke with from Quixey afterwards was very friendly and that I
enjoyed talking to him. I was really just playing for the $100 but after
speaking with him I felt like I should inquire about job opportunities. This
is pretty much the opposite of what happened after my only other programming
challenge experience.

I don't know if people saw this or not but a while back Instagram had a
programming challenge inspired by the Darpa Shredder Challenge. They were
offering a t-shirt for correct solutions and promised explicitly that every
solution would get a personal response. They got more entries than they were
expecting and didn't give t-shirts to everyone (which is somewhat
understandable). What is much worse is that they didn't even bother to respond
to correct solutions. I spent over an hour on it (including the bonus part)
and they couldn't even send me a copy and pasted letter of something like
"Thanks for playing! We got more attention than we expected and won't be able
to give you a t-shirt but we do appreciate you playing." I would never
consider working for a company that would respond to an unexpected number of
solicited entries by simply ignoring them. I doubt that I'm the only person
who was permanently turned off about Instagram by having my email and solution
simply deleted without being looked at or responded to.

~~~
eru
I guess they should have written something like "We promise a personal
response to the first 5000 correct solutions."

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DannyPage
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think you should have to sign-in to do the
practices.

~~~
mattwdelong
Agreed. I'm not at all interested in giving my email out just to see what this
is all about.

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alphamale3000
Mailinator, anyone?

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StavrosK
33mail.com is what I swear by.

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translocation
Haha, just won- and the algorithm happened to be one that was posted on the
front page of HN earlier this week! It just goes to show, there's no reason to
get work done when you can be reading articles on HN- it could turn out to be
important.

But I have to say, I haven't heard of Quixey before- it looks like they're
building a search engine for software. Are they just trying to replace
platform-specific app markets, or is it something trickier than that?

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Liron
Right now, all your devices are magic wands. It would be better if they were
genies. We do wish-to-spell conversion.

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CJefferson
Unless this has been changed since last time, there should be a big proviso.
You can only get money if you live in the US. This should really be made
clearer, earlier.

~~~
Liron
We're currently sending to any PayPal email.

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theycallhimtom
Won the $100 :). It took me about 15 minutes start to finish. You have to do 3
practices then wait a bit before you can do the real thing.

You are given about 10 lines of code and need to change one line to make it
correct. The problems are things like binary search, topological sort,
shortest paths, etc.

~~~
Liron
$400/hour isn't bad :)

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greenpizza13
Doing this ONLY is python is a shame.

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artoonie
Agreed, I just lost because of improper python syntax. Hardcore C would be
more fun, with memsets and frees such that bugs can exist in memory
management.

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eridius
Yeah. I'm no Python programmer, so I screwed up one of the practices by
writing `set.push(node)` instead of `set.add(node)`. Luckily that didn't
matter on the challenge itself (except for the wasted seconds checking all my
assumptions about what the python functions were doing).

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jholman
It sure would be nice if it didn't require Skype. Still, I'm enjoying doing
the practices.

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sirclueless
Does it actually _require_ Skype? That's how they plan on notifying people,
but there's also a big countdown board you can watch if you like.

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jmilloy
I tried the practices, and I didn't like it because they don't provide sample
input, and you can't test your changes in browser. Most of my seconds are
spent copying and pasting, and setting up sample input. I guess other people
are more perfect typists, but I make typos and so my solutions were often
wrong if I didn't test them.

~~~
jakubw
I don't think testing would be of much help. These challenges are so designed
that there is precisely one error in the function and precisely one way to fix
it and either you notice it or you don't. If you were able to test your
changes on the fly you could just as well try all the different modifications
you can think of (of which there aren't many) without thinking too much.

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gibybo
I also just won (gibybo) and am pleased with the process. Overall it was
smooth and what I expected, although it would have been cool if the challenge
problem I got had sample input/output like some of the practice ones.

My strategy for those who might benefit: I checked out the profiles of all the
previous winners today and found that the challenge question was always one of
three. I looked up the algorithms and practiced by implementing a python
version of each, noting where the tricky parts were. Then when I entered the
challenge I used my reference python version and compared them. I was a bit
lucky in that the challenge code was roughly laid out the same way as I
happened to do it earlier.

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kruhft
I don't really feel like registering for the practices, so how does this work?
Do they give you a piece of code that has a bug in it and you're supposed to
find it and fix it?

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nfriedly
Yea, prettymuch. You have to complete 3 practice runs correctly first, and
then you can do the actual challenge. (Over skype, apparently)

The practice runs were all 5-10 lines of python where exactly one line had to
be changed or added to correct the bug. I didn't come across any syntax
errors, just logic errors, so I finished the practice runs pretty easily
despite having almost 0 python experience. (I did miss one because I was too
slow though. I found the bug and correctly guessed at the python syntax to fix
it, but it took me 67 seconds.)

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habudibab
Would it be possible to show some examples on the page? Like previously
corrected bugs?

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Liron
Good idea. Check out the video here:
<http://blog.quixey.com/2011/10/03/quixey-challenge/>

~~~
habudibab
Which is staged. I wonder whether the real challenges are in similar style and
difficulty. Looking at the problem in the video it would help to just quickly
pull out template code and compare it. Would help to have an easier way to
know whether this is something I could accomplish or is completely over my
head.

$100 bucks, I could need those.

~~~
weaksauce
similar in scope and, depending on your grasp of the algorithm and python,
roughly the same difficulty +/- a little bit.

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o2sd
1\. Register (with email) for practices - THAT INFORMATION WAS NOT PROVIDED
BEFOREHAND 2\. Python only - THAT INFORMATION WAS NOT PROVIDED BEFOREHAND 3\.
Skype required - THAT INFORMATION WAS NOT PROVIDED BEFOREHAND

-1 fail and don't send me any spam on my email addy.

~~~
jodrellblank
You're wrong on two counts:

"The algorithm will be implemented as a Python 3.x function". \- The
instructions page, the first item.
(<http://www.quixeychallenge.com/instructions>).

About page: "Add Skype user quixeychallenge as a contact. A working microphone
and speakers/headphones are required. [..] We'll Skype call you when it's your
turn."

And since the registration form is required before you do anything, and it is
one form needing an email address, I think that counts as 'telling you about
the need for an email address before you get involved' too.

