Entering programming contests can hone your skills, fatten your wallet, and make you more marketable in the industry. Oh, and they can be a heck of a lot of fun. Indulge yourself as you learn about a few of the contests in which you can participate.
For some developers, slaving over a hot keyboard is merely a way of paying the bills.
For others, however, it's an avocation as well as a living. Writing code is a passion, and the quest for excellence — or even just the solution to an irksome problem — doesn't feel like work.
For those who love to explore and expand their craft, the late nights spent in pursuit of elegance can not only lead to better software at work, but to recognition within the community, and even to money and spiffy gold medals.
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Entering programming contests can not only hone your skills, it can fatten your wallet and make you more marketable in the industry. Oh, and they can be a heck of a lot of fun.
What contests?
Glad you asked. Here's a selection.
The Loebner Prize was established in 1990, and offers $100,000 and a gold medal to the first program that passed the Turing Test.
Alan Turing, you may recall, proposed that a computer could be said to "think" if its responses were indistinguishable from those of a human. The Loebner contest judges hold keyboarded "conversations" with both human confederates and computer programs, and score them on how human they seem.
No one has yet succeeded in winning the gold (the contest ends when someone does), but each year, $2000 and a bronze medal are awarded to the computer whose responses are considered most human-like. A silver medal and $25,000 are up for grabs if a program achieves a sufficiently high score without passing the Turing test completely.
The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) offers college students worldwide the opportunity to demonstrate their problem-solving, programming and teamwork skills. Regional competitions are held in October and November, with the finals in the spring of the following year at Baylor University in San Antonio, Texas.
Finalists must collaborate to create solutions to challenging problems (here's a (PDF) link to the 2006 set) within a tight time limit. The top four teams receive gold medals, and the first-place team also gets $10,000. The other gold recipients get $3000. Fifth through eighth place teams get silver medals and $2000, and ninth through twelfth get bronze medals and $1,000.
Microsoft Show-It-Offs can gather at the Shared Source Project Competition. Do you covet an Xbox 360, complete with goodies like an HDTV? Windows for Devices.com and Microsoft are sponsoring a contest inviting developers to build a real-world app using Windows CE along with either or both of two Shared Source components — the Windows CE WebCam driver and/or the Windows CE DVR engine.
Here's a summary of the rules, from the contest site:
Create your cool Windows CE project using 120-day free evaluation versions of Windows CE and its development tools, either or both of the designated Microsoft Shared Source components, and your own programming ingenuity
Submit your project before midnight, Pacific Daylight Time (GMT-7) on July 28, 2006
Winners will be announced on WindowsForDevices.com after August 15, 2006
Judges will award prizes based on factors such as originality, real-world practicality, feature-extension of the Shared Source components, project documentation, and a short video that demonstrates the successful operation of your project
First prize is the ultimate Xbox package, and three other winners receive Xbox 360 game consoles.
The Chatterbox Challenge is a contest held annually since 2001 for online bots written in any programming language. While the 2006 contest is over, there's plenty of time to plan for next year. There are two categories: regular bots, and learning bots.
Bots are judged on how well they answer judges' questions, which, according to the rules, are not based on specialized knowledge but are questions a reasonable (human) person could answer.
Top prize this year was $1,000 and a gold medal. The silver medallist received $500, and the bronze $300.
The DonationCoder C++ Builder Contest is for C++ programmers using Borland's C++Builder. Individuals or teams can enter. According to the site, "Winning programs will be showcased on our site, and made available for public download as freeware/donationware. We will do our best to get some recognition for your program and help you get donations."
TI-Freakware Programming Contest is for those who create games for Texas Instruments calculators. Prizes include TI calculators, a TI keyboard and T-shirts.
The CoolApps Developer Challenge is a contest to develop apps for the Sun Grid Compute Utility. Two sub-contests allow different approaches: contest A entries may be written in any language, and contest B entries must be developed using Compute Server Plugin for NetBeans. Three prizes per contest will be awarded: one of $15,000 and two of $5,000 each.
The ICFP Programming Contest is a competition held the weekend of July 21-24, 2006. It is associated with the International Conference on Functional Programming. Anyone may enter, but an individual may only participate in one team. Teams may participate from any location and use any programming language. There are what the site describes as "small" cash prizes.
Where else can you find contests? Well, some PHP contests, when active, show up here. Microsoft often promotes its contests in the MSDN Flash newsletter.
