August 14, 2006 — originally posted on artima.com
For a number of years, Google has run a yearly coding contest named Code Jam. The smartest (young) programmers in the world compete against each other for prizes and fame.
There are 3 online rounds (September 5-6, September 14 and September 19). The top 100 will be invited for the final coding showdown at Google New York on October 27, 2006. All travel and accommodation expenses will be covered by Google and there will be over $165,000 in cash and prizes.
What's most exciting for me is that this year, for the first time, Python is one of the supported languages. (The others are C++, Java, C# and VB.NET.) I'm hoping that at least some of the finalists will get that far by exploiting Python's superior coding speed!
(Googlers, others involved in setting up the competition, and their families, etc., etc., are not allowed to participate, as is customary in such things.)