As a result of certain malpractices that took place during the April Contest we are banning 3 of our top 20 Indian winners for the next challenge. They will also not be receiving prize money for the April Challenge.

In keeping with the spirit of CodeChef and since we do not want to spread a negative vibe among the contestants we will not publicly reveal the names of the people disqualified from the contest.

However, please bear in mind that we take cheating very seriously and will do everything we can to promote fair and healthy competition.

Cheating in future contests will result in the permanent banning of the faulty party.

We are optimistic and hope that something like this will NOT happen again.

Regards,
Team CodeChef

Hi Guys,

Here it is as promised! An exclusive interview with Bhavin Turakhia, the CEO and founder of CodeChef and Directi. A personal pet project for Bhavin, it has now been over a year since the launch of CodeChef. On the occasion of its first anniversary, Bhavin talks about the year that’s gone by, some future plans and extends his appreciation towards the programming community for all their help and support.

Make sure you hear him talk about the website’s exciting new features, plans for the future, the CodeChef University, and even see what he has to say about the April fool’s prank we pulled off!

CEO speaks.. from Directi on Vimeo.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think. So do comment and let us know!

Cheers,
Team CodeChef

Hi guys,

It’s been 3 months since we changed the prize structure for the Indian audience. Our intention was to encouraging more people to participate and showcase their skills in our monthly contests. With similar objectives in mind we are now opening up our  international prizes to a wider audience as well!

Starting next month we will now be rewarding the top 10 non-Indian participants. The prize structure will be as follows:

We hope that you all are as excited about the new prize structure as we are!

So make sure you comment and let us know what you think.

Cheers,
Team Codechef

To all our fellow CodeCheffers out there,

The April Challenge (the real one) has come to the end. So let’s take a look at our winners!

India:

1. Yash – Rs.10000
2. Surendra Kumar Meena- Rs.7000
3. Tasnim Khan – Rs.5000
4. Kunal Jain – Rs.4000
5. Keshav Dhandhania – Rs.3500
6. Ravi Villuri- Rs.2500
7. Imran Khan – Rs.2500
8. Gagandeep Singh Bhatia  – Rs.2500
9. Pratham Khandelwal- Rs.2500
10. Abhijith Reddy D – Rs.2500
11. Venkatesh – Rs.1500
12. Anil Kishore – Rs.1500
13. Harish Narware – Rs.1500
14. Swapnil Chavada – Rs.1500
15. Divyanshu – Rs.1500
16. Nadeem Moidu – Rs.1000
17. Balajiganapathi – Rs.1000
18. Idiotsid – Rs.1000
18. Face – Rs.1000
18. Ikon – Rs.1000

Global:

1. Chen Jian Fei – $440
2. Tomaz Hocevar – $275
3. ChenGaoyuan – $220
4. Balakrishnan Varadarajan – $110
5. David Stolp – $55

Contest Statistics:

Congratulations to all the winners of this month’s challenge and thank you all for participating.

This contest started out with our April Fool’s prank that seemed to get mixed reactions from our participants. To all those whose sentiments we may have hurt we sincerely apologize. Take a look at the first comment to spot the April fool joke here.

In order to encourage learning on CodeChef, we have added some editorials of the contest problems, that have written by the problems setters themselves. The remaining editorials will be added shortly. Make sure you check them out here.

Cheers,
Basil

We are facing some intermittent issues since last couple of hours on our site. We are investigating the same. We highly regret the inconvenience caused to all of you. We shall be back soon.

Update: 12:30 AM IST (12th April, 2010)

The site is up and running. However the Forums may not be accessible for a while. We are sorry for this glitch. Due to this downtime, we shall be extending the contest by 1 more day.  So now the contest ends at 1500 Hrs (IST) on 13th April, 2010.

The “actual” Codechef April Contest is now underway. The contest will end on April 12, 2010 at 15:00:00 IST. We are sorry if any of you felt offended in any way. We hope you all take this as what it was meant to be – a joke, and enjoy the contest which is now available at http://www.codechef.com/APRIL10 . We will be updating this blog post with more information shortly To all those who got fooled and also to those who didn’t – Happy Fool’s Day once again. To those who thought we wasted your time, we are extremely sorry, it was not our intention. [Please be easy on the admins ]

Regards,

Aniruddha.

For over a year now, we at Codechef have been setting up complex coding problems and trying to find the best programmers to solve them.  We are often asked why we do this.  Why do we make people rack their brains just to solve these hypothetical problems?  Have you ever considered the thought that these problems might not just be hypothetical?

Until now, we told you that we were just trying to promote awareness about algorithms and the like in India.  However, due to recent security clearances granted by the Indian Space Programme, we can now be more honest about our motives.

• Packing materials for the mission is always a huge headache. Packing the boxes helped us solve this. The Best Box took care of creating the perfect box.
• Once on the moon, the robots needed to move about effectively. Bytelandian Robots came to our rescue.
• A whole series of chemical experiments were optimized using the results of Chemical Reactions .
• We even took care of the nutrition requirements for our astronomers with Healthy Dinner Party.

You may be wondering why we’re telling you all of this.  Well, here’s the answer: This is the final Codechef Contest.  All of the problems from this month’s set are related to specific issues that the Chandrayan Space Team is working on to finalize preparations for the rocket launch.

We are sorry if we had misled you in past, but we did it for India.  Now, the country needs your help.  We ask that you spend some extra time to help the lunar mission by submitting some super fast code!! (we prefer C/C++ to someOtherLanguage)

Cheers!
The Chef

Our programmer of the Month for April consistently ranks in the global top 5 in CodeChef Challenges. Ask him to introduce himself and he’ll say “computing machine, my window into the world, rainbow of keystrokes” A professional from Durham and an adventurous soul, here’s David Stolp, better known to you as pieguy!

Name: David Stolp
Age: 24
Institute: California State University, Chico
Userid: pieguy

How/When did you start programming?
I took a couple programming classes at university (taught in C++) while I was still in high school, but initially found it boring and even failed one class.  It wasn’t until I started programming in C that I really began to enjoy it.

What do you do when you’re not programming?
Unless I’m sleeping or cooking, I’m almost always at my computer, except for the occasional hiking trip (just got back from Death Valley).

What do you like most about CodeChef?
The contest format.  I like having multiple problems to work on simultaneously instead of having to focus on a single task until it’s finished.

How many hours a day do you program?
Probably around 8 to 10.

What’s your favourite book and why?
The Art of Computer Programming.  I’ll take Knuth over Tolkien and Rowling any day.

If you could eat dinner with any famous person (past or present), who would it be and what dish would you have?
Megan Fox.  If she’s not available, Richard Stallman.  Couldn’t say what the dinner would be, but the dessert would be pie.

What are your plans for the future?
I’ve recently been accepted into a master’s program, and I will likely pursue a PhD after that.

The CodeChef team wishes PieGuy all the best!