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.

Hello Codechef-ers,

A big thank you to all those who participated in this month’s contest and congratulations to all the winners. This was our first truly global contest and we are more than happy with the response.  The winners for this month are :

India:
1. Ajay Somani – Rs. 22000
2. Akhil Ravidas – Rs. 13750
3. Imran – Rs. 11000
4. Surendra – Rs. 5500
5. Rajat Kansal – Rs. 2750

Global:
1. Tomasz Czajka – $440
2. pieguy- $275
3. Josh Metzler – $220
4. Renat Mullakhanov – $110
5. Zhujiaye- $55

Fun Facts for this contest:

• Second first place finish in a row for Ajay Somani.
• Tomek jumped from out of the top 10 to first place in the last hour of the contest. A splendid performance by him.
• Quite a few new faces like gaurav, melchi and V.R. Devarapally in the top 10 list for India.

Contest Statistics:

Test Cases:
Test cases for the December contest can be found here. The solutions for the contest are now public.

Upcoming Contests:

We have a Re-Snackdown contest coming up soon. For details, please check http://blog.codechef.com/2009/11/23/re-snackdown-december-20th-4-7pm/ . Another contest open to students as well as professionals is in the works, so stay tuned.

We have been trying our best to optimize the performance of the website, but certain architectural issues prevent us from making full use of our processing power. We are finding work-arounds to fix these issues so there might be times when some of you find weird errors popping up on your pages. Please report these errors to admin@codechef.com.

Please let us know what you thought of this contest and any other suggestions to improve the site.

Happy holidays.

Cheers,
Aniruddha