LiveCoda, Real-Time Coding Competition 95
Robert Shelton points out this "debrief" from ESCI LiveCoda 2006, a live programming competition. From the article: "On Wednesday the 24th of May at Loop Bar in Melbourne (Australia) fourteen teams of programmers gathered for the first ESCI LiveCoda real-time programming competition. Possibly the first performance based real-time programming competition. Before a packed night club with live music, each team had just ten minutes to write a program which could correct a corrupted image." (Here's a mirror of the LiveCoda site).
"How long, O Lord?" (Score:4, Insightful)
When are people going to start programming contests where the award is given for something that's actually useful, such as fewest bugs, most readable, best re-use of existing code, etc?
Re:"How long, O Lord?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh - TopCoder has had these for a while. (Score:3, Insightful)
But most people prefer competing in the algorithm competition (which are an hour and a half). I know I do - I'd much rather be done with the competition in a couple hours than spend a whole week stewing on it. I also do regular component development programming for a living - I don't feel the urge to go do more of that after work for less pay.
Re:Did the choice of language affect the results? (Score:4, Insightful)
With this particular competition (which looks to consist of reading in a simple image format, like PPM then applying a couple of simple transformations then writing the new file back out), the code isn't going to be too terribly different between most languages, and therefore the higher expressiveness of something like Python or OCaml wouldn't really get a chance to shine.
Re:"How long, O Lord?" (Score:2, Insightful)
Again, not all programmers who are fast devalue commenting. Rather than mucking around adding their name and birthday to every source file and commenting "increment variable i by one", they're commenting complex trickery and the points that might actually confuse even a seasoned programmer. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the latter.
Finally, that fourth generalization has no basis in reality. Just because someone can work fast doesn't mean they can't work with others. Just because someone can do drywall work in a house very quickly on average doesn't mean they can't work with dozens of other contracted workers on the job working at different paces towards the same finished product. It all depends on the person, not the speed of their programming.
These are problems. They aren't competing to create a stable architecture with which to build enterprise software upon. They're solving problems. Just because a programmer is competing in this speed contest does not "patently" make them a poor programmer in the big picture, nor does it make them incapable of teamwork, nor does it make them "strange". It sounds like you have some security issues about your own ability and are just taking it out on people who are talented enough to be competing in such a great and challenging speed contest.
Your troll is elaborate, though it "patently" is one.
Re:This is what people actually believe? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know plenty of smart, fast programmers that write clear code and follow the rules. Sometimes the best ones will write something that most others have a hard time following, not because it is "sloppy", but because they are more talented. They also find and fix plenty of bugs that the other 9/10s made in their "maintainable" code. I have seen times where a super programmer correctly debugs a regular programmer's code in a design review sight unseen, just from the description. I have also seen regular programmers say "I checked it", or argue with a super programmer, until he gives up in and takes 10 minutes to find the bug and fix it himself.
What's my point? I don't have one, except maybe don't be a hater just because you can't hit the ball like Tiger Woods.