Hey Guys,

The SPOJ judge will be down for a couple of hours, for maintenance work. You will not be able to make any submissions between 6am and 7am IST, on 30th April, 2011.

We will be back soon.

Regards,
Harsh Munshaw

Are you tired of CodeChef’s bugs interrupting you and not knowing what to do about it? We are constantly looking to make CodeChef more efficient than ever and as part of this effort we have created bugs@codechef.com. Yes, we are all ears!

Use the email address to report any bug that you come across on CodeChef. Our technical team does have its hands full at the moment and so fixing the issue may take a little while. But rest assured every detail you send in will be noted and fixed in time.

What’s more, periodically we will even reward users that most frequently find and report valid bugs in the system!

We’re hoping with this will be able to make CodeChef reach its true potential in the best and fastest way possible.

So what are you waiting for? Hurry up and get detecting! And remember.. only bugs allowed!

Cheers,
Team CodeChef

Dear CodeCheffers,

Due to reasons beyond our control, our judge has suffered a network breakdown, so the judge won’t be accepting solutions. We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused. We will keep you guys updated when the judge is back online.

Updated on 6th April, 12:30pm: Our Judge is back online and should be stable. Incase you are experiencing anything unsual feel free to write in to feedback@codechef.com. We regret the inconvenience caused.

– tojo

Welcome to the April Programmer of the Month edition!

This month we have with us Md. Mabubul Hasan(aka Kungfu Panda) who is our Programmer of the Month. Mahbubul has been part of CodeChef since July 2009 and has taken part in almost all CodeChef’s contests, just at the age of 24 he is already a great programmer. He is ranked 5th in the long format and 15th in the shorter format of the contest. We hope this is just the start and we have lots 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 Mahbubul has to tell us about himself.

Name:  Md. Mahbubul Hasan
Age:  24
Institute:  Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
User id:  white_king
Twitter ID: shanto86@gmail.com

Brief introduction about yourself:

I graduated from Department of Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 2011. Currently I am lecturer in this institute. I have a younger sister. My father is a Professor and my mother is house wife. I am a bit shy and introvert person infront of strangers. But I am quite talkative with my close friends. I have a very bad memory, I forget very easily. My face recognition system is very bad. Very often I forget my close friends name, cant recognise familiar one and also make mistake some stranger as my friend

How/When did you start programming?

In grade 6, I saw a grade 11 text book describing QBasic at back. I was very happy when my first programme ran succesfully. After that in grade 7, I came across visual basic and made some GUI based programme. I was really very excited at that time to make a GUI based programme so easily. Later, I helped my father making a result processing database software in visual foxpro. In grade 9, I saw a code of racing game in C in a computer magazine. I coded all but it did not compiled properly. And I did not know C then. So I learned C from a book which seemed quite complex comparing to Basic languages. After learning basic of C, I learned about online judge uva and tried to solve but without success. I tried for a month but out of luck. Could not solve a single problem. Then I found a book where there were about 50 solves of acm problems. I learnt that conio.h is not allowed in uva then And from then I started to solve uva problem and never turned back. I solved lots of problems learned lots of algorithms, participated in many online contests, solved in different OJs. Participated in Bangladesh Informatics Olympiad and became champion, but for visa problem we could not attend IOI in Poland in 2005. Later we were invited to participate in ICPC Dhaka site 2005 unofficially. We became runner up there beating all the universities of Bangladesh, just Chinese team from Fudan University was ahead of us. In 2007 we became champion of dhaka site, 2008 runner-up. I participated in World Finals 2008 and 2009. I also participated in Google codejam India site. From 2006 to 2011 we participated in over 30 national contests and became champion in 27 contests.

What do you do when you’re not programming?

I love math. I sometimes read articles, books on mathematics. I also wrote two math books for our school kids. Professor M Kaykobad helped me a lot in this regard. I like to watch movie. I also like songs specially old songs which might be a bit uncommon among others.

What do you like most about CodeChef?

Codechef is a very good platform for programmers. I specially like their devotion to bring up the indian teams. Being a problem setter in ICPC Kanpur site, I knew genorosity of DirectI. I like the long contest and short contest both. But recently I am not getting time to participate fully, thats what makes me sad. There are lots of things to learn from Codechef monthly contests. I sometime envy my juniors that they are getting the opportunity to participate in these great contests but in our time there was not such.

How many hours a day do you program?

It depends. I still like to participate in Codechef, Codeforce. In my study years, I used to spend around 6 to 8 hours but now it is just bound to few online contests only.

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

I would love to have some dinner with the coding giant Petr and Tiancheng Lou aka ACRush. Any kind of dish will be fine for me if they give some delicious desert after dinner

What is the secret to being a good programmer?

There is no secret. Work Hard, try to participate in all the online contests and try to know the solutions of the problems that you could not solve in the contest.

What are your plans for the future?

I don’t know exactly. But I just want to take right decision at the right moment. I like research. So I think I would go for a Ph. D. and then some research group. I also have interest for industry. So I also might join some good company and see if I like there, in that case I am gonna stay there for long.

I would like to thank my family, my friends, some online programmer friends who helped me a lot. I also like to give special thank to Shahriar Rouf for being my team mate from the first contest till the last one in national contests, he has been a great support.

Cheers!
Team CodeChef