Top coder competition

www.topcoder.com

Basically an outsourcing site where you can (supposedly) win money by competing to build software components on demand, or do algorithm contests for fun and some money.

I did a competition the other day, even though I knew they'd be hard. I mean, you know, worst case scenario is I had no idea how to solve it and I just go and move on to something else. But it turns out the problem wasn't all that hard (except for the third one), and they were all related to eachother.

So once I figure out problem 1 I just copy some code over for problem 2, make some changes, get in the top 7 after the coding phase is done and am feeling pretty good about myself. Well, the challenge phase comes along and my second program fails.

The reason? Time. TopCoder wants their programs to run, but run fast. Any algorithm that will take longer than 2 seconds will fail. I think the weakness here, for me at least, is my lack of math skill. I looked at source of some of the competitors and it seemed that the ones that did well were based in math.

Oh well. Lesson learned, plus, it was fun.