Hi CodeCheffers,

At the beginning of the year we announced that we would be implementing a brand new rating system for our Cook-Offs. Unfortunately its launch was delayed as we were busy tweaking and fine tuning the parameters in our algorithms to try and improve the new rating system into its best possible version. We wanted to make sure that the rating system that we put up is as good as it gets! A lot of of you have been patiently waiting for the implementation and we apologize for this delay.

Its time for good news now. The moment has finally arrived! Our new rating system has now gone live!

It is available at the link .

The contests that have been affected by this are COOK01, COOK02, COOK04, COOK05, COOK06 and COOK07.
COOK03 has not been rated as it was a team based contest.

The rating will only apply to contestants that have made at least 1 submission during a contest.

For more details about the rating system please take a look at our earlier blog here.

If you have any feedback or opinions that you would like to share with us about this new system the feel free to write in to feedback@codechef.com or putting up a comment below this blog post.

Regards,
Vishal

NIT Trichy and the Directi Go for Gold Initiative present to you Bytecode 2011, a 6-hour ACM ICPC style algorithm intensive online programming competition. Bytecode is organized as a part of Pragyan 2011, the International Level Techno-Managerial Festival of National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli.

Bytecode 2011 is scheduled to be held on the 20th of February 2011, Sunday, from 14:30 Hrs IST to 20:30 Hrs IST. Registration is free and open to all. Total cash prizes worth INR 80,000 to be won!

Bytecode 2010 was really exciting, seeing the participation of more than 2500 participants from over 60 different countries. This time, its going to be bigger, fatter and tougher in competition, prize money and problem statements!

So fight it out against competitors from all over the world and try to wrest the mantle to become the best coder. Byte the code or bite the dust !

We promise you a really exciting and challenging set of problems! Hope to see you all @ Bytecode ’11

For more details and rules and regulations, visit the main contest page and ByteCode on Pragyan.

Hi CodeCheffers,

On  Sunday, 13^th February we witnessed an awesome contest organized by the students of IIT Kanpur as part of their festival Techkriti. The International Online Programming Contest (IOPC) was held on Codechef in partnership with Directi’s Go for Gold Initiative.

The 390 teams that registered for the contest were given 16 problems solve within a span of 24 hours!
With over 1880 submissions that we received, here are our top 10 ranked teams:

01) Kuplyu Moped!
02) Mt.Zion
03) Proof2
04) ANYDream
05) novice2011
06) KILLALL
07) shindo
08) LazyAnts
09) ahmed_aly
10) neuron

NOTE: Only teams that registered for the contest on the Techkriti website will be eligible for prizes.

We at CodeChef would like to congratulate all the winners of the contest and also thank everyone that participated.

We are also happy to let you, that all the participants that registered on the IOPC website will be receiving certificates of merit/participation.

For all those that would like to solve the problems of the contest we have now transferred them to the practice section as well.

Congratulations once again!

Regards,
Harsh Munshaw

IIT Kharagpur presents to you the 2011 edition of Bitwise, a state-of-the-art online algorithm-intensive programming contest.

Registration is free and open to all. Contestants need to solve a set of problems posted on the site using C or C++. The solutions are evaluated, not only on the basis of correctness, but also on their execution time and space complexities.

Bitwise 2011 is scheduled to be organized on the 13th February 2011 from 1200 Hrs, IST.

Bitwise 2010 had over 4900 teams participated from a total of 1473 organizations, universities and institutes spread over 66 countries.

Enigma, a puzzle game which was incorporated as a part of Bitwise 2007. Due to its immense popularity, Enigma is back with another set of twisted questions especially designed to tantalize your brain! Enigma presents itself as an exciting and appropriate precursor to our central challenge.

Welcome to the February Programmer of the Month edition!

This month we have a young 20 year old Rudradev Basak who is our Programmer of the Month. Rudradev has been part of CodeChef since August and surprisingly, just at the age of 20 he is already considered a great programmer. In the last 5 months, he has been in the winning 4 times already, we hope this is just the start and we have a lot to see from this great mind. On behalf of the CodeChef team, we wish him good luck for the future.  Now let’s see what Rudradev has to tell us about himself.

Name:  Rudradev Basak
Age:  20
Institute:  IIT Delhi
User id:  rudradevbasak

Brief introduction about yourself:

I am a 3rd year student doing my B.Tech. in CSE@IITD. I have always liked to solve puzzles, both mathematical and algorithmic.

How/When did you start programming?

I learnt BASIC in middle school, and a bit of Java and C++ in standards 10 and 12 respectively. I liked to code even then, and of course I did learn a lot in my first couple of year at IITD, but I was introduced to competitive programming only in around April 2010. Also I owe it to my teammates (Nikhil and Pradeep) for getting me interested in ACM ICPC in around August last year, and I have been programming a lot since then.

What do you do when you’re not programming?

Between IITD curriculum and programming, there is not much time for much else. However when I do get time, you would find me playing games, watching movies with my friends, reading fiction or playing with a Rubik’s Cube.

What do you like most about CodeChef?

The fact that the long contests really give you time to learn and try out new things. Also it has been a great platform to boost programming awareness among Indians.

How many hours a day do you program?

Depends. Can vary from zero to ten depending on my mood and how much other work I have.

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

Am not sure about the person, but I would probably have a couple of Chicken Rolls

What is the secret to being a good programmer?

A passion for programming, a bit of hard work (but it is not really ‘hard work’ if you really have the passion), and also some inherent math and logical ability.

And sure for success in online contests you need a lot of practice.

What are your plans for the future?

I would like to complete my undergraduate studies, and in the meanwhile, try to perform well at this (and also hopefully the next) ICPC World Finals. After that I may go for higher studies in CS, but I am not very sure.