14 Year-Old Wins International Programming Contest

marcog123 writes: "The International Olympiad in Informatics was held this week in Bulgaria. The IOI is a programming competition for high school learners up to 20 years of age that has a focus on problem solving and algorithms. It was won by 14 year-old Henadzi Karatkevich of Belerus (list of gold medalists), beating the world's top high school programmers including 18 and 19 year-olds to become the youngest winner in the IOI's 21 year history. Competition is really tough, with some countries taking months off school to concentrate only on IOI training. Henadzi first entered the IOI in 2006 when he was only 11 years old and won silver (missing gold by only 6 points) and won gold in 2007 and 2008. He has the opportunity to enter for the next three years; that is, unless he follows the path of Tarence Tao who won IMO gold at 12 and then went to university the following year. If he continues his current streak, he will easily surpass the current record of 6 IOI medals by South Africa's Bruce Merry."