Here’s our CodeChef Programmer of the month for February 2010. He came in the top 20 for the July Challenge, and has been prominent on CodeChef ever since. He’s even submitted the tuorial Coin Game to our wiki. Lets find out more about our Programmer of the Month for February, Mark Greve.

Name : Mark Greve

Age : 25

Institute : Aarhus University

User ID : gmark

Twitter ID : markgreve

How/When did you start programming?

I started programming in BASIC around the age of 10 and switched to C++ when I
was 12. I never really wrote anything serious until I began university, and my
programming career first really took off when I started doing programming
contests.

What do you do when you’re not programming?

When I’m not spending time in front of my computer, I enjoy doing various
sports such as soccer and table tennis. I also like to go spearfishing when the
weather permits.

What do you like most about CodeChef?

The problems, of course! The problems in the monthly contests are of a really
high quality, and it’s a real pleasure working on them. Other than that I think
the CodeChef platform is quite nice. It’s cool to be able to check up on what’s
going on by looking at the blog or checking the tweets.

How many hours a day do you program?

That varies quite a lot. On average I’d say around 3 hours per day.

What’s your favourite book and why?

I have hardly read any books in recent years. However I did really enjoy
reading the trilogy in five parts about the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I’m remember being very impressed by all the extraordinarily creative and
intelligent comedic dialogue in these books.

If you could eat dinner with any famous person (past or present), who would it be and what dish would you have?

That’s too hard to answer.

What are your plans for the future.

Once I’m done with my PhD studies, I will probably go for an industry job.
Other than that I am still enjoying doing programming contests just as much as
when I started back in 2007, so I probably won’t leave competing anytime soon.

Hi all,

At Directi, I along with many of my tech-inclined colleagues, have been volunteering significant personal time and energy towards constantly enhancing the programming talent across the country through several social and community initiatives across the last few years. Codechef has been our flagship non-profit initiative in this regards. We have since held seminars, provided coaching, conducted campus engagement activities and much more.

Sponsoring the ACM ICPC world finalists is another such initiative on our part, to assist our champions in putting India on the map within the coding circuit. We at Directi have personally interacted with all the members in these teams - all brilliant individuals - and we are proud to have sponsored them for the ACM ICPC world finals.

I invite you all to join us in wishing them luck as they compete with 103 other teams around the globe for fame and glory!

Use the widgets on the right to send them your wishes via facebook and twitter

Cheers!
Bhavin Turakhia, CEO, Directi.

THE TEAMS

THE KINGS GAMBIT

TheKingsGambit (TKG), name derived from a famous opening move in Chess, was formed in 2008 and went to represent India in the World finals 2009. Presently, TKG expands to the names Anshuman, Gaurav and Rajat. The strength of the team lies in the diversity of skill set, the positive attitute and co-ordination. The final year computer science trio believes ‘work hard, party harder’.

Let’s hear it from the team itself - TheKingsGambit: “All our engines work on the fuel supply of coffee/tea :P. Most of our free time is spent watching movies, TV shows or playing games (sometimes outdoors). Some not so common facts about us are that we all studied in the same city and have met before beginning college. One of us has almost drowned in three water bodies while another one of us has driven a real war tank. One of us has acted in a movie and people definitely don’t know which one of the above has been made up.

We have done well as a team previously and hope to register a good performance at the World Finals this year.”

COUNTER GAMBIT

CounterGambit, are a rare blend of analytical problem solving, algorithmic skill and programming prowess intended to throw some fierce competition at TheKingsGambit, and has found its way to the ICPC World Finals. The crew consists of Venkatesh, Abhilash and Akhil.

Venkatesh is an algorithm contest veteran with a great deal of experience since high school, including the IOI 2007 and the ICPC World Finals 2008. His mathematical and analytical skills form a crucial part of the way the team functions. Akhil is a seasoned programmer, and brings lightning fast implementation into the equation, especially with dynamic programming, graphs and searching. Abhilash comes from an application development background, and has his way with the language, and works data structures to do his bidding.

All three, evidently, possess brilliant analytical skills, love to solve problems, and love to compete.

How can you wish the teams?

Leave a comment on FaceBook or Tweet luck to the teams!

When you tweet remember to include the hashtag #acmicpc2010

Hello fellow CodeCheffers,

In an attempt to motivate and encourage more people to participate and showcase their skills in our monthly contests, based on the feedback from several CodeChef winners, we have decided to reward more number of participants starting this February. To start with, we are doing this only for Indian participants.

So, we’re glad to inform you that we will now be rewarding the top 20 participants in India! The prize structure will be as follows:

Note: All prizes above Rs.5000 will be taxed at 30%. TDS certificates will be issued at the end of the financial year.

At CodeChef we’re always looking to improve, and for this very reason we give a lot of importance to the feedback we receive. Please feel free to suggest any changes or voice any concerns that you may have.

We’re very excited about the new prize structure and hope that you all are as well.

Cheers,
Team Codechef

Hi guys,

CodeChef will be under scheduled maintenance today from 2300 hours (19th Jan ‘10) to 0200 hours (20th Jan ‘10) IST

Will let you all know when the site is up again.

We regret the inconvenience but we need to do this

Cheers!

Hello fellow Codecheffers,

Congratulations to all the winners of our first monthly challenge this year and thank you to everyone that participated. The winners for this month’s challenge are :

India:
1. Ajay Somani - Rs. 22000
2. Ashutosh Mehra - Rs. 13750
3. Anshuman Singh - Rs. 11000
4. Pratik Tandel - Rs. 5500
5. Yash - Rs. 2750

Global:
1. David Stolp - $440
2. Stephen Merriman - $275
3. Josh Metzler - $220
4. Max - $110
5. Tomasz Czajka - $55

Fun Facts for this contest:

• The top scorer for the challenge problem changed quite a few times. triplem, pr0ton and innocentboy were all contenders for the spot by the end of the contest.
• Pieguy got the top score for the challenge problem with only 7 submissions! This is also his first contest win. Congratulations to you!
• Its the first time we’ve crossed 9000 submissions for a monthly contest!
• Ajay Somani got his 3rd win in a row and user seda has made his first entry into the top 10. Congratulations guys!

Contest Statistics:

Upcoming Contests:

We will be having a team based contest on 24th of January with the 8 problems from the Snackdown final. It will be a 5 hour contest that starts at 21:30 Indian Standard Time. Since CodeChef users (our snackdown finalists) have already had a chance to see these problems, we will not be having prizes for this contest. You will be able to register for the contest here, and the contest will be available at: http://www.codechef.com/SNONLINE/.

As always, we would love to hear your suggestions and feedback to help make this site better. If there’s anything you would like us to know, do drop in an email to feedback@codechef.com .

Cheers,
Basil

Greetings everyone.

The first Codechef Campus Snackdown is now over. Congratulations to everyone who managed to make it to the final and also to those who did well in our on-line rounds. The on-site final went off smoothly and the participants as well as the spectators had a lot of fun attacking the problems. We, at Codechef, feel that it is very unfair that only the 7 finalists got a chance to solve these problems With this in mind, we plan on having a team based contest on the 24th of January with 8 problems from the Snackdown final. It will be a 5 hour contest starting at 21:30 Indian Standard Time on the 24th of January 2010. You can start registering for the contest at here. The contest will be available at: http://www.codechef.com/SNONLINE/.

Considering that a few people already know about the problems, we have decided that there won’t be any prizes. However, the contest will be a lot of fun and we encourage you all to participate.

Regards,
Aniruddha.

On January 10th 2010, we at CodeChef witnessed the most awesome teams from campuses all over India battle it out in person at the Mumbai headquarters of Directi. 639 teams of three each, had registered for the CodeChef Campus SnackDown, a two round ACM ICPC styled coding contest. The first round of the SnackDown took place on 21st November 2009. We then flew the top 7 teams from various corners of India to prove their mettle.

The 21 finalists met on 9th January for a pre-event dinner on the night before the contest finals. Here they got a chance to interact with each other, meet Bhavin (CEO of Directi) and mingle with other personnel from Directi.

Good food, interesting conversations and some fun laughs turned the dinner into a fun filled night!

The next morning at 9:30 AM teams met at the DirectiPlex with more food, some table tennis and of course, a 4 hour final on site round of the SnackDown to look forward to!

And now finally, after multiple rounds, tiresome travel and sleepless nights, we present to you the CodeChef Campus SnackDown Winners!

1st Place: Dream - IIIT Hyderabad

Bhavin and Amit with Yash Kumar (18yrs), Nadeem Moidu (20yrs), and Kunal Jain (19yrs)

Dream is an example of national integration; hailing from Rajasthan, Kerala and Chhattisgarh, these three young programmers met at IIIT Hyderabad. Inspired by their Seniors – The Kings Gambit, they formed their own team - Dream and went on to win the SnackDown!

2nd place: Phoenix - DJ Sanghvi, Mumbai

Ramki and Bhavin with Purav Shah (20yrs), Pratik Tandel (20yrs), Krunal Manik (20yrs)

This team’s friendship goes back to school days. Having started programming in the first year of engineering, they were introduced to algorithms and contests by their friend and mentor Varun Jalan (most of you know him as syco). Under Varun’s guidance team Phoenix was formed and they are soon going to represent India at the ACM ICPC world finals in China.

3rd place: CounterGambit - NIT, Trichy

Bhavin and Yazhini with Akhil Ravidas (20yrs), Abhilash R (20yrs) and Venkatesh Basker (19yrs)

Counter Gambit is formed of three hardcore Southies. Since each of them are from completely different programming backgrounds they have their our own strengths and weaknesses. However, as a team, they are really quick in solving problems which helps them  get a head start in most contests, or so they’d like to think They too are representing India at the ACM ICPC world finals this year.

The rest of our finalists are (in order of ranking):

Team: TheKingsGambit
Institution: IIIT - Hyderabad
Team Members: Anshuman Singh (21yrs), Gaurav Agarwal (22yrs) and Rajat Goel (21yrs)

Team: BruteForce
Institution: IIITM - GwaliorTeam Members: Shilp Gupta (22yrs) Manyata Goyal (21yrs) and Vineet Chaudhary(22yrs)

Team: CKrackers
Institution: Madras Institute of Technology
Team Members: Rajesh Venkatachalam (20yrs) Rajesh Rajagopalan (20yrs) Gokulakrishnan Gopalakrishnan (20yrs)

Team: DareToCode
Institution: IIIT - Allahabad
Team Members: Imran Khan (22yrs) Surendra Kumar Meena (21yrs) and Tasnim Khan (20yrs)

We had a lot of fun with the CodeChef Campus SnackDown and would love to do something like this again. We also have some fun interviews with the rest of these teams so let us know if you want more insiders information.

Cheers,
Team CodeChef

Here’s our CodeChef Programmer of the month for January 2010. He came in the top 20 in the June Challenge, and has ranked in the top 5 in six CodeChef challenges since then. Lets find out more about our first Programmer of the Month in the new year, Balakrishnan V.

Name : Balakrishnan V

Age : 25

Institute : Johns Hopkins University

User ID : balakrishnan_v

Twitter ID : balakrishnan_v

How/When did you start programming?

I hardly programmed until I joined college(undergraduate). Even in IIT, I had my degree in Electrical Engineering. So I was learning signal processing, information theory etc. instead of programming. But, these did give me a lot of Math background which helped me improve my problem solving skills. However, I used to solve (non-programming) puzzles in my free time. I started real programming after I got introduced to some of these online contests like ProjectEuler , (now) codechef and topcoder.

What do you do when you are not programming?

I normally spend a lot of time browsing internet, trying to learn some new concept(either by looking at other’s code/reading a wikipedia article).

What do you like most about CodeChef?

The quality of the problems are very good. So I enjoy doing them. I especially like the problems which involve concepts that are new to me.  The tie-breakers are  very nice as they are more research oriented and involve creative thinking.

How many hours a day do you program?

On an average, I program for about 5-6 hours.

Which is your favorite book?

I do not read a lot of books. In fact, I have a hard time reading a book or watching a movie(since they require a lot of patience).  However I do read a lot on the internet. I learn mostly from attending classes, browsing the internet (wikipedia, Mathworld, papers), solving problems, discussing with people, asking questions.etc.

If you could eat dinner with any famous person (past or present), who would it be and what dish would you have?

That is a hard question. There are lots of interesting people around the world.

What are your plans for the future?

I will probably go for an industry job once I graduate. I also have interest in academia. But the chances are low that I will apply for a faculty position at the moment. In any case, my ultimate goal is to make some  contribution to science.

Hey Guys,

From the 14th to the 21st of December ‘09 we had the Facebook CodeChef ‘Comment to Win’ contest. Each day we uploaded a photograph of a different CodeChef merchandise that we would give away. Participants were then asked to comment on the photograph. Every 24 hours we had a lucky draw and 5 people from among all that had commented were selected to receive the merchandise of the day. Hemant Verma was the luck winner of an iPod Touch, our merchandise for the final day!

We had a lot of fun with this contest and we hope you like the photographs we put up. The comments received were just awesome and the enthusiasm you guys showed is really appreciated!

I’m sure you’re all wondering who the man in all the photographs is. That’s Pranab Kelkar, just another friendly DirectIan who agreed to be our model for the contest. Thanks a lot buddy!

While a lot of the comments deserve a mention, here is our favourite comment for each photograph.

Day 1 Winners: Vikesh Khanna , Abhishek Kona , James Olabode Samuel , Shiv Prakash , Dezul Udani

Favourite Comment : Arup Saha
if(you = giv_me(t-shirt))
{
i = assist_U (drums);
if(chef_plays (guitar) && i_play (drums) )
bool make_great_music = 1;… See More
}
else
{
i = go_back_to ( coding ); /* and win t-shirt there!!!*/
}

Day 2 Winners: Gorrerpati Siva Prasad Reddy , Shivam Gulati , Atish Bhattacharya , Akshata Bhat , Piyush Sachdeva

Favourite Comment : Akshata Bhat
…And God said, “let there be light”, and there was a Flash (drive).

Day 3 Winners : Harshit Gangal , Ayush Saxena , Nirmal Agrawal , Deepu Joseph , Uday Deep Singh

Favourite Comment : Rohan Tahiliani
The (Byteland) Saints :
Oh, when the Chefs, start cooking code ; Oh, when the Chefs start cooking code
How I want 2 be in that T-Shirt ; When the Chefs start cooking code
And when the Hats, begin to fly ; And when the Hats begin to fly
How I want to be in that T-Shirt ; When the Hats begin to fly

Day 4 Winners : Pradeep Nayak , Kushagra Gour , Rajat Kansal , Vimalkumar Jeyakumar , Jayakrishnan Nair

Favourite Comment : Ankush Gupta
A famous saying goes like,that “Books are the man’s best friends”. Certainly that’s very true and evident from the pic The power in the written word (speciallty algorithms!) is so immense that it makes the chef sleepy most of the time. Mark Twain has rightly said : Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Our winner of the iPod Touch for Day 5 of the contest : Hemant Verma

Favourite Comment : Abhi Arya Bhat
boy: (serious) i love you.
gal: (laughs) hahahahha…!! lol… omg..!! hehe…!!
boy: (serious) i’ve iTOUCH…
gal: (serious) i love u too
end of story…!!
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

While the contest has ended, the fun does not need to end there. Post on our Facebook FanPage wall and let us know what other activities you would like us to have. We would love to get feedback for this contest as well. So let us know what you think.

Our fanpage is as much yours as it is ours so feel free to use it!

Cheers,
Basil

Hello everyone,

The Re-Snackdown online round is over and we have decided to fly down the top 7 teams for the on-site finals. The finals will be held at our headquarters in Mumbai - Directiplex,  on January 10, 2010. The teams which will battle it out in the finals are : TheKingsGambit, DareToCode, BruteForce, CounterGambit, phoenix, Dream and Ckrackers.

Teams 8-20 will get the cash prizes as previously announced. Please check this link for more information about the prize structure. Teams 8-20 in order are : anshulgoyal, Blitzkrieg, ARP_Poison, idleheads, fighters, M_block, BackBenchers, Continuum, Jaspal_Siddarth_Ashish, fighter, Monty_and_his_GF, random and ramthegreatcv. Congratulations to all the teams who made it to the top 20. We will contact you soon.

As mentioned previously, here is a special mention of the best team from each college and their global rank.

The teams Astein, Daemons and double_s deserve a special mention for featuring in the Global top 10.

If you have any kind of feedback related to this contest or otherwise, feel free to comment on this blog post or contact us at admin@codechef.com. Happy Holidays.

Regards,

Aniruddha.