Re:All well and good, but... (Score 2, Informative)

Point well taken. As a former competitor in the IOI, however, I can vouch that the contest is NOT a speed programming contest. In fact, contestant scores are based solely on the performance of compiled code in terms of correctness and efficiency. While it is true that the contest is given with a fixed time limit for program development, a significant portion of that time is spent on algorithm design rather than coding. For most competitors, the differentiating factor is not the ability to finish writing a program in the allowed time but rather the ability to come up with the optimal algorithm for solving the problem. This is pretty different from some of the more recent programming contests such as the ACM or TopCoder in which coding speed is paramount. The winners of the IOI are those individuals able to successfully design and implement the best algorithms for solving the presented tasks. As a caveat, it is true that correct and efficient code may not always be particularly readable or maintainable. Elegance of program design is not a criterion for IOI grading but is an element in some of the more recent TopCoder competitions.