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!
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!
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.
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
CodeChef has come a long way since its beta launch in Jan 09. We hosted our first programming contest in March and soon started looking at other ways we can encourage the developer community. One of our earliest initiatives was CodeChef Campus Chapters aimed at helping students become better programmers. The response from you guys has been awesome and within a few of months we already have 35 active Campus Chapters from all over India.
In an effort to keep you updated with what is happening on all our Campus Chapters we plan to dish out a CodeChef Monthly Campus Newsletter. Here’s what we’ve got for you this month:
Read the entire Newsletter on our Wiki
On the 3rd of Sept 2009, I delivered a session at MPSTME, NMIMS (Mumbai), on ‘The Basic Implementation of a Search Engine’.
The crowd attending the session ranged from first year students to final year students and so I kept the session rather basic without going into the details of the subject. The students were bright and very enthusiastic, and the audience participation was simply awesome.
In the session I demonstrated a small Perl Script with a few functions to explain a Crawler, Indexer and Search Logic. I am attaching the code to this post and below is the video of the session.
Lastly, I would like to thank Gaurav Munjal and the entire ACM MPSTME team for all their help.
This session was part of a CodeChef Campus Chapter. Register here to start a Campus Chapter in your college as well.
CodeChef Talk at MPSTME, NMIMS (Mumbai) from Directi on Vimeo.
Cheers,
Vikram
~vix on CodeChef Twitter
CodeChef MPSTME and ACM MPSTME have come together to present “The Open Book Programming Competition“.
As the name suggests, the contestants are allowed to bring books and material related to the languages or the compilers used. The contest is hosted on CodeChef as a part of the CodeChef Campus Chapter Program. This is a closed competition and the contest URL shall be revealed to students present at the venue. So if you are a college student in Mumbai and would like to participate make sure to register and reach the venue on time.
Details of the competition:
Date: 1st September, 2009
Timing: 4 pm – 6 pm
Venue: Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management and Engineering, NMIMS University, Mumbai.
Registrations: Online Registrations are open at www.theobpc.co.cc . There are limited number of seats and the registrations will be closed as soon as the seats are filled.
The Prizes for the Competition are:
Consolation Prizes to be given as well.
CodeChef MPSTME Chapter is also organizing a session for MPSTME students where Vikram Ghotgalkar, Software Developer, Directi (~vix on CodeChef twitter) will demonstrate a basic implementation of a Search Engine in 30 mins. This will be followed by a prize distribution round of “The Open Book Programming Competition”.
For further details please visit www.theobpc.co.cc or mail in to acm.mpstme@gmail.com
If you’d like to host your contest on CodeChef, feel free to mail us at contests@codechef.com
Cheers!
Anusha
Greasy Spoons,
Hrishikesh Terdalkar from Chennai Mathematical Institute and winner of the TechFest Challenge, was nice enough to send us some photos of him and his new Nintendo Wii:
If you are a student and would like CodeChef to host a programming competition on your campus, check out our CodeChef Campus Chapters.
Happy coding!
It’s been just over a month since we’ve launched and we’re really excited about the way things are going. We now have over a thousand registered users and accept hundreds of code submissions a day. The response has been great, but we’re not done. As a way to continue to challenge, engage and give back to the developer community, we’re pumped to announced a few new initiatives.
CodeChef Campus Chapters – Are you a student interested in setting up a CodeChef Chapter on your campus? Each month we’ll send you optimal solutions to specific contest problems, tips & tools to become better software developers and (of course) some awesome CodeChef merchandise (everyone looks cool in chef’s hat).
Blogger Community Program – Are you a blogger interested in spreading the word about CodeChef? We got what you need: exclusive access to content, press passes and more.
User Group Outreach Program – Are you part of a user group which is enthusiastic about programming? We’ll give you a place for your meetings, and a chance for your users to network and gain recognition.
First contest starts Sunday, keep practicing…
© 2009, Directi Group. All Rights Reserved.
