If you've used Top Coder or submitted in the obfuscated code contests, what's been your experience? Do you see value in these as a mark of a good hacker?
Would you be more likely to hire someone who did well in these?
I finished my UG last year from India, but participated in several OPC's( Online prog contests) winning a few. I also represented my Univ in IBM-ICPC(Inter collegiate prog contest).. all of these were wonderful experiences.Trying out such problems really helps ... and increases your understanding of algorithm complexity and related literature... Google Summer of code during the last year of Univ was also fun.. albeit a different kind of experience...nonetheless taught me a lot. Both me,and my teammate during these code contests who was also a high performer in TC and currently work at different startups. I genuinely believe these experiences definitely made us better hackers.
I won the solo division for the Rails Rumble a few months ago. For me, the most valuable part of the competition was how inspirational it turned out to be. Seeing how much was accomplished under severe constraints (48 hours, max 4 people per team) shed new light on all my other development efforts.
I imagine that people who do well at such competitions would be better hires, but that would be due to other factors - passion for coding, good time management skills, etc. I doubt it's a major difference, though.
I've had that problem too. There was a competition, possibly in 2004, to win an old BBC Micro by writing a program on a BBC Micro. I wrote a program to draw a spinning tetrahedron with back face culling. I was disqualified because they thought that I'd memorised a type-it-in listing from an old magazine. I also won the 1996 IOCCC Best Layout.
