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Winners of the 'Google CodeJam 2004' Contest

Posted by michael on Sat Oct 16, 2004 07:37 PM
from the only-one-man-would-dare-give-me-the-raspberry dept.
Businesses Google The Internet Programming Technology
astrab writes "The Argentinian programmer Sergio Sancho, 30, won the 'Google Code Jam 2004' programming contest, whose final was held yesterday in Google HQ (Mountain View, CA), and pocketed $10,000. According to Dirson, Sergio studies at UBA (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) and works at the Research and Development Center which Core Security owns in Buenos Aires. More information also in the official Google Blog."
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Winners of the 'Google CodeJam 2004' Contest 50 Comments More /

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  • Direct link to the winners circle (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dancin_Santa (265275) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Saturday October 16 2004, @07:39PM (#10547569) Journal
    http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/codejamwinner s.html [google.com]

    Coolness. If there was any one company I would trust to "Do no evil", it would be Google.

    • Re:Direct link to the winners circle (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Emugamer (143719) * on Saturday October 16 2004, @08:06PM (#10547710) Homepage Journal

      Coolness. If there was any one company I would trust to "Do no evil", it would be Google.

      I would agree if it was based on classification of who of the companys who have as much influence on the world as google, would Do No Evil, but googl bows to much to comercial and political views for me to trust it anymore.. maybe 4 years ago, but now that so many people use it, the powers that be are focusing their attention on it...

      It reminds me of the movie; Toys

      • Re:Direct link to the winners circle (Score:5, Informative)

        by harves (122617) on Sunday October 17 2004, @01:41AM (#10548905)

        OK, I'm getting sick of this. From all the evidence I have seen, Google bows to political pressure just the same as any citizen. Give me an example where Google has tried to impose it's own opinion on people of the world? Where does it use it's brand power to impose it's political or self-serving commercial views (which would be evil)?

        Bowing to politicial views of a country is not evil. Just because it has power in the world (as a trusted source of information and thus a fantastic propaganda machine) does not mean that the heads of Google should wield that power for any reason. Google should not be a 'knight in shining armour'.

    • If there was any one company I would trust to "Do no evil", it would be Google.

      Not that I necessarily disagree with you, but on what basis do you make that claim? Google is in fact a for-profit corporation after all.
      • You don't have to have a basis to make an absurd claim on Slashdot. Google is officially 'hip' with the kids here until they slip and then we hate them. Unless its the third week of the month. Or the moon is full. Gah, I can't keep up.
      • A for-profit public corporation has a duty to act in the interests of it's shareholders. And one of the main parts of that is to try to make a profit. But that's not the only responsibility they have to the shareholders. They also need to adhere to their stated aims, as purchasers of stock have bought on the basis of these aims. And one of those stated aims as published in the prospectus is "To do no evil".
        • They also need to adhere to their stated aims, as purchasers of stock have bought on the basis of these aims.

          Perhaps, but when their stock splits multiple times and still continues to maintain a respectable trading price (as with MSFT), I doubt many shareholders will care. Keep in mind that shareholders are also for-profit entities.

    • I agree (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Pan T. Hose (707794) on Sunday October 17 2004, @12:46AM (#10548715) Homepage Journal

      Coolness. If there was any one company I would trust to "Do no evil", it would be Google.

      I agree wholeheartedly. But sadly Google cannot trust their users to do no evil. As an example let's take this "Google file system." As much as I am usually against frivolous lawsuits, in this case I really hope Google will sue its authors and win. Why? Because this so called "file system" is a classical example of parasite which can only hurt Google giving absolutely nothing in exchange whatsoever. And for what? So its "developers" could have their project posted on Slashdot frontpage? So they could say "look, mom, how 'leet' I am"? I ask you, people, what if one day someone writes a "file system" stealing storage from Slashdot, saving its files in the form of gigabyte first posts filled with goat sex links and literally tons of uuencoded pornography? This is exactly the same, only much worse, because Google has much less intrusive advertisements and no corporate agenda. From every greedy US corporation, Google is unquestionably the closest to being absolutely perfect. And how do we say "thank you"? By stealing their property? By advertising this pathetic thief "file system" on the front page of the most popular website on the north hemisphere? I just wanted to protest and clearly state that I am strongly against it. I hope someone will start a paypal fund to help Google in court. We cannot tolerate such a behaviour. Please keep in mind that Google is not another IBM who didn't see anything wrong in helping Hitler or Cisco who is perfectly comfortable with building the largest machines of censorship and oppression in the history of human kind. Google is trying to do what is best for us. They deserve our gratefulness and, what is even more important, respect. The existence of script kiddies shamefully exploiting Google's superior services for their own miserable advantage is a precedence not only insulting to our intelligence but a one actually harmful for us in the long run, because that could possibly mean the end of fantastic projects from Google, when they eventually stop to think and inevitably say: "Hey, what's the point in making another contest? Why give them so much if they just want to steal from us? Maybe that popup pornography ads and paid search results placement weren't such a bad idea, after all?" I know I certainly would. Sorry for a long rant. I just love Google and I hate people who hurt it. Going back on topic, I think it was a great contest, even though I haven't won anything. Google is great as always. I wish every corporation would act that way.

  • Not much info available (Score:3, Interesting)

    by haluness (219661) on Saturday October 16 2004, @07:39PM (#10547572)
    So what did he win the $10K for?

    • Re:Not much info available (Score:5, Informative)

      by SilentStrike (547628) on Saturday October 16 2004, @07:51PM (#10547644) Homepage
      He won the final match, so he got the $10k. It was just like an ordinary Topcoder Single Round Match (problems were written by TopCoder employees, not Google Employees). You can read more about TopCoder here [topcoder.com].

      I competed in the tournament and qualified (was about 160 out of 2500, first 500 made the cut) in the qualifications, but then lost in the first online round (280 out of 450 in round 1, needed to be 250).

      The competitions on TopCoder are fun in general. If you want to hone your algorithm skills, I recommend you compete. And you can even put your referer as rrenaud when you sign up;).

        • Re:Not much info available (Score:5, Interesting)

          by chrisd (1457) * <chrisd@@@dibona...com> on Saturday October 16 2004, @08:27PM (#10547805) Homepage
          Actually it wasn't connected to the google codebase at all. The questions were all general computer algorithms related. I checked in on the contest, it was really cool!

          On of the problems was a game space solving question, I don't remember what the other two were, but some of the topcoder contestents mentioned having heard of if through slashdot, so I'd imagine some might post.

          Chris DiBona

          • Re:Not much info available (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            The game space thing was a 6x6 version of 'peg solitaire', with a max of 12 moves. The problem size was chosen so that you can do it using brute force, but only if you search in both directions (from the start and goal state) simultaneously. If I had figured that out 5 minutes earlier, I would have won :-(

            The two easy problems were:

            - a[1]=b[1]=1, a[n] = either a[n-1] or b[n-1], b[n] = a[n-1]+b[n-1], given a pair of values figure out n.

            - Build a magic square using the standard algorithm (see wikipedia), t

  • Working on Windows boxes? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jarich (733129) on Saturday October 16 2004, @07:40PM (#10547575) Homepage Journal
    Anyone else notice that all the contestants were on Windows boxes? I thought Google was a Linux oriented shop.... There's a picture on the blog

  • Ob. Family Guy Quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by Faustust (819471) on Saturday October 16 2004, @07:53PM (#10547650) Homepage Journal

    Brian: Hola, me llamo es Brian ... Nosotros quieremos ir con ustedes.. uhhhh ...

    Sergio(spanish): Hey, that was pretty good, except when you said "me llamo es Brian," you don't need the "es," just me llamo Brian.

    Brian: Oh, oh you speak english

    Sergio (sigh): No, just that first speech and this one explaining it.

    Brian: You .... you're kidding me, right?

    Sergio(spanish): Que?

    • Ob. Orgazmo quote (Score:5, Funny)

      by seanadams.com (463190) * on Sunday October 17 2004, @12:02AM (#10548591) Homepage
      Man A: What's your name, again?
      Man B: I am Sancho.
      Man A: Look, I get a lot of people auditioning all the time. What makes you think that you'd be good enough for porno?
      Man B: I am Sancho.
      Man A: Great... but what do you do?
      Man B: What do I do? I am Sancho.
      Man An: And...?
      Man B: And there are many Jeffs in the world, and many Toms as well. But I... am Sancho.
      Man A: And...?!
      Man B: Are you Sancho? No you are not. Neither is Scott Baio Sancho. Frank Gifford is not Sancho. But I...
      Man A: You... are Sancho!
      Man B: That's right.
      Man A: Okay, you're hired.

  • Thanks. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adam31 (817930) <{adam31} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday October 16 2004, @08:56PM (#10547901)
    Sweet! Thanks for a link to the problems! It's really interesting to know how much money was won or where they're from.

    Anyway, I did notice that Reid Barton was a 3rd place finisher. I recognized the name from a book called Count Down by Steve Olson about the U.S. High School Mathematics Olympiad team in 2001. Good read about geniuses in high school. What's interesting is that programmers are usually mathematical, but not necessarily the other way around -- that one person can be near the top in both fields (esp 2 years out of high school) is remarkable.

    • Re:Thanks. (Score:5, Informative)

      by xYoni69x (652510) <yoni.vl@gmail.com> on Saturday October 16 2004, @09:28PM (#10548041) Journal
      Yes - Reid Barton is becoming a very recognizable name around contests of this sort. He participated in the IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics), the IMO (International Mathematics Olympiad), the Putnam (an American mathematics olympiad), and of course the Google Code Jam (and maybe others I missed - ACM?). In short: This guy owns you and me.

      It's actually common for people to participate in both computer science and mathematics contests. Remember, the CS contests (IOI, ACM, GCJ) are about computer science, not just programming. (Obviously you have to know how to program, but that's not at all what you're being tested on.) The problems themselves are very mathematical, so the people who participate are usually pretty mathematical themselves.

  • Google Geography Lesson... (Score:5, Funny)

    by voxlator (531625) on Saturday October 16 2004, @08:56PM (#10547904)
    Additional cash prizes went to the other top 50 finalists, who are working or studying in the United States and in 16 other countries, from Scandinavia to central Europe to Hong Kong, Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

    I know we have the EC, but 'central Europe' is now a country? When did we get downgraded from a continent?

    I must have missed that one while I was reading the sports pages...:o)

    --#voxlator

  • GCJ overlapped IOI this year (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xYoni69x (652510) <yoni.vl@gmail.com> on Saturday October 16 2004, @09:04PM (#10547940) Journal
    Hi Google,

    I was a contestant in IOI 2004 [ioi2004.org] (the International Olympiad in Informatics) this September. I would have participated in the GCJ also, but unfortunately Google's dates and the IOI dates overlapped. See the "important dates" here [topcoder.com] - the Qualification Round was on September 15-16, and the IOI was on September 11-18. Oh well.

    (There were people walking around with GCJ 2003 T-shirts. It was pretty amusing.)

    Google: Something to consider for GCJ 2005. (IOI 2005 will be on August 18-25.)

    Thanks,
    Yoni

  • Felicitaciones! But you better start running! (Score:4, Informative)

    by chord.wav (599850) on Saturday October 16 2004, @11:26PM (#10548451) Journal
    Over here in Argentina, isn't very healthy to have your name near that ammount of money in the frontpage of the newspapers.
    With kidnaps beign in the top ten of modus operandies(?) prefered by delincuents, he should start applying for a (name a 1st world country) visa ASAP.
    Professional tennis players had to ask the media not to mention the ammount of cash they won for that matter.

    • Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shky (703024) <shkyoleary@gmail ... inus threevowels> on Saturday October 16 2004, @07:44PM (#10547605) Homepage Journal
      I was unaware there were teams, let alone teams based on country.

      Argentina didn't win, the US didn't lose, Sergio Sancho is the winner, and it shouldn't matter what country he's from.

      /Canadian

        • Wow, what a dumb idea... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by WIAKywbfatw (307557) on Saturday October 16 2004, @08:38PM (#10547848) Journal
          Yeah, right. So by that rationale, you should have a first prize of, say, $50,000 if the winner is from the US but only $10,000 if he's from India. Do you realise how dumb that sounds?

          Good code is good code: it doesn't matter where it's written, who it's written by or where the writer got his education. If you know what you want then it doesn't matter if the programmer you employ to do the job is based in Silicon Valley, Bangalore or Buenos Aires. The sooner you realise this fact (and the possible implications that it has for you), the better.

          It's precisely because Indian coders can do most (if not all) jobs as well as their US counterparts that has US companies turning to them: why pay a guy five times as much because of his geographical location if you don't have to? To reiterate my point again, don't expect to get paid a premium just because of your latitude and longitude.
          • It's not always just about good code. It's also often about time of implementation, flexibility for change, and domain knowledge, which can not always be accomplished with outsourced development. This is why some companies are turning back from outsourcing after finding that it's costing them more to send their solutions offshore and why some companies haven't even considered outsourcing, because they know it would kill them.

            So, when you're paying a programmer more in the U.S., you're paying not just for t
          • Mod this down please. This poster is pretty naieve about how the world works. That's why there are all those trade rules and what not. It is the reason why sweat shops exist. Wage is relative. Money is relative. So many massive depressions around the world has been as a result of pegging a nation's currency to another nation's whose is stronger. Don't get drawn in by the topical socialist message "all people are equal." I mean that's true, that's obvious. But the decisions those people make, and th

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