Topcoder: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:58, 8 December 2005

Revision as of 00:18, 15 December 2005

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The [[business plan]] behind [http://www.topcoder.com topcoder.com] comprises several objectives. One goal is to be a recruitment center where companies can come and find programmers who are proven to be highly skilled. Another aim is to be an [[outsourcing]] center. TopCoder also hosts design and development competitions in which coders can compete to create [[component]]s and [[application software|applications]] that third parties have contracted for.

TopCoder design and development competitions are week-long competitions. New components are posted every [[Wednesday]], and coders can choose a component from a list of [[Java programming language |Java]] and [[Microsoft .NET|.NET]] components, and they have a week to design or develop their chosen component. Each week new components are posted. Development components are generally components that have been designed in a previous component design contest.

In the early days, the ''Iron Man'' system was set up under which coders were grouped into rooms of ten according to skill level (determined by [http://www.topcoder.com/index?t=support&c=ratings rating]), in order to encourage newcomers (who would have little hope of beating out the best coders for prize money) to stay and compete. After the contest, the 3 highest scoring coders in each room were paid according to the skill level of the room (winners in the room of contestants with the top 10 ratings were paid more than those in the room with coders 11-20, and so on). This created some paradoxical situations such as the possibility of coming fourth in the whole contest and getting no money, while the 111th placed contestant got paid, and gave rise to ''ratings diving''. Ratings diving, or taking a ''ratings dive'' was accomplished simply by doing very poorly on purpose in a particular contest (by opening and not submitting any problems or submitting incorrect challenges). As a result, a contestant would, in their next contest, be placed in a room with 9 coders among whom they had a good chance of winning some money. The idea was that the dramatically increased chance of winning money made up for the fact that the money to be won was a lesser amount given the lower average rating of the room.

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Coders have since been divided into two divisions, Division I and Division II. Division I consists of all coders with a rating of at least 1200, and Division II consists of all coders with a rating of 1199 or less. Coders are grouped in rooms with other members of their division, in groups of up to 20 coders in such a way that within each division, the average coder ratings in each of the rooms are roughly equal.

== External links ==

*[http://www.topcoder.com/ Official TopCoder website]