Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Zimmerman programming contest


For you programmers that have some time to spare and a keen interest in tweaking your code here is the site for you. Programmers all over the world compete in writing programs that solves a certain problem. The really nice thing about these contests is that the problems chosen for the contests are carefully configured to be accessible to many people of all skills. Often a solution to a problem is very easy to find but to find a good solution is really hard. Also the contest runs over many days so you have ample time to write your code. When you think you have a good program you can start submitting solutions and you will get immediate feedback on how good your program really is. The feedback from your first submissions will often send you back to the drawing board trying to come up with a better algorithm. This is very good practice for programmers in general and I heartily recommend it. Happy crunching!