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.

The announcement is long overdue. This month, the CodeChef Programmer of the Month is Ajay Somani who has been a consistent performer on CodeChef since the March 2009 challenge. He even stood 1st in the November 2009 Challenge!

Here is more about Ajay:

Name: Ajay Somani
Age: 20
Organisation: Google
Userid: innocentboy
Twitter ID: ajay_somani

Brief introduction about yourself (under 140 characters): I’m a very ambitious and competitive guy. I’m passionate about computer science and I’d like to do well in whatever I work on. I like travelling to new places and eating great food.

How/When did you start programming?
I started programming when I was 15, during freshman year at college. I just started by doing assignments of a compulsory course at college but later some seniors at our college introduced me to topcoder and I found it fun. In my first year summer holidays I came to know about SPOJ, ACM, UVA and some other online judges and I started practicing more.

What do you do when you’re not programming?
I pretty much end up using my computer anyway, mostly doing reading random stuff on Google reader, facebooking, watching movies and sitcoms. I do enjoy playing lightweight flash games on internet. I also sleep a lot and really like eating good food and hanging out with friends.

What do you like most about CodeChef?
I’ll probably go with prizes too . Apart from that Codechef is a great platform especially for Indian students to compete and learn from each other. I also like the challenge problem in monthly contests. It’s fun to try out different approaches and see how they perform on the judge test data.

How many hours a day do you program?
It varies greatly depending on the mood and requirement on that particular day. On an average I’d say around 7-8 hours.

What’s your favourite book and why?
I’m not much of a book-reader. I haven’t read any novels yet and I haven’t really liked any of the course books that I’ve read so far. I’d say Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS) and The C++ Programming Language (Bjarne Stroustrup) are some of the better books that I’ve read.

If you could eat dinner with any famous person (past or present), who would it be and what dish would you have?
Person – Leonardo Da Vinci. Dish – Would like to try anything delicious from his time

What are your plans for the future.
I really like my job so I don’t have any plans of changing that in the near future. I’m interested in computer science research and entrepreneurship, so I might go for higher studies later and work on a challenging research problem.

The Programmer of the Month this time is a family man who is also a self taught professional programmer who began programming in BASIC when he was just 8 years old. He is so passionate about it that both work and play combined, he programs for almost 9 hours a day!

Here’s more about our Programmer of the Month for November ’09, Josh Metzler!

Name: Josh Metzler
Age: 33
Institute/Organisation: I work for ISciences
Userid: jdmetz
Brief introduction about yourself (under 140 characters): I am a self-taught professional programmer. C++ is my language of choice, though I do program in other languages from time to time. I love solving challenging problems (programming or otherwise). I am married with three young children.

How/When did you start programming?
I wrote my first program (with help from my Dad) in BASIC on a PCjr when I was 8 or 9. I dabbled in BASIC from then until high school, when I was given a copy of Turbo Pascal. I didn’t take any CS classes in university, as it didn’t occur to me that CS was a possible career path. After graduating and doing some volunteer work, though, I got a job with some programming as a part of it that has gradually become mostly programming. I also found the UVA online judge and TopCoder, and now CodeChef.

What do you do when you’re not programming?
I spend time with my wife and kids, read books, do work around the house, or go to church. During the summer I play Ultimate Frisbee.

What do you like most about CodeChef?
There’s quite a bit I like about CodeChef. I enjoy the challenging problems, especially in the ten day competition format. With young children it isn’t easy to set aside specific chunks of time for competitions, but I can always find some time here and there to work on a problem. I also enjoy the opportunity to help others learn in the forums, and the variety of languages available to compete with.

How many hours a day do you program?
If I count both work and play, I probably spend 8-9 hours a day programming.

What’s your favourite book and why?
My favourite book is Ender’s Game because I haven’t read any Harry Potter. I’m currently reading a terrifying non-fiction book about climate change
called With Speed and Violence.

If you could eat dinner with any famous person (past or present), who would it be and what dish would you have?
I would have pizza, but I’m not sure on the person. Maybe Richard Feynman or C. S. Lewis.

What are your plans for the future?
I’m fairly happy with my job right now, though I have some interest in working in the finance industry. I am somewhat rooted in Ann Arbor, Michigan,USA, as my oldest child is in elementary school, we own our house and like our neighborhood, and we live near my family who helps with childcare. So, I don’t anticipate any major changes in the near future.

This time, our Programmer of the Month is Stephen Merriman – this New Zealander is absolutely passionate about programming. He’s been a regular fixture on our leaderboard since July and stood 1st in the September Challenge. Some tidbits about Stephen– he makes websites for a living, loves the Harry Potter series and Roast Chicken is his meal of choice.

More from the Programmer of the month himself:

Name: Stephen Merriman
Age: 23
Institute: none, though I can throw in a shameless plug for my work: http://www.cre8d-design.com
Userid: TripleM

Brief introduction about yourself (under 140 characters): Having not discovered programming contests until university, I now love them, and was very excited when I found a new one in CodeChef.

How/When did you start programming?
It’s quite hard to remember, actually. I remember making games in BASIC on an old Acorn Archimedes when I was very young, and then when my sister took some computing papers at university I would watch/read her textbooks. So maybe somewhere from 7 to 10? After competing in the IMO throughout high school, I never discovered programming contests until part way through university where I competed in the ICPC and found Topcoder among others.

What do you do when you’re not programming?
What do you mean not programming? Oh yeah, I do find time to play soccer during the summer, and attend a weekly pub quiz (sadly, there aren’t enough questions about programming for me to be any good).

What do you like most about CodeChef?
The contests, of course; I love entering any contest I can find online. Plus the fact that all those crazy targets at TopCoder don’t compete, so I actually have a chance of winning

How many hours a day do you program?
Seeing as my job involves programming all day, let alone the time I spend solving problems on SPOJ, CodeChef or competitions like the Codejam, it’s probably too large for me to want to think about!

What’s your favourite book and why?
This is going to sound a bit repetitive after Anshuman and Varun, but make that three in a row for Harry Potter; maybe there’s a connection between programming and magic? I’ve always found novels about magic enjoyable. Plus, I have read all 80 something Agatha Christie murder mysteries (the link is more obvious there, problem solving <-> whodunit).

If you could eat dinner with any famous person (past or present), who would it be and what dish would you have?
Boy, that’s a tough one.. the dish would be roast chicken just because it’s my favourite meal. I’d have to think more about this but for now let’s say Fermat, just to see if he really did have a solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem.

What are your plans for the future?
Currently I’m perfectly happy with my job; I get to work from home for my sister, sleep in a bit, and make websites all day. I can’t see this changing any time in the foreseeable future, but we’ll see how things go. Competition wise, I’m hoping to get through to the Codejam finals this year as I did last year.

Once again, it’s time we announce the CodeChef Programmer of the Month. The guy’s been topping most contests and if you’re wondering why he didn’t win the August Mini Challenge, it was because he set the problem!  Everyone wants to know about the person behind the username syco and profiling him has been long overdue.

Without beating around the bush any further, let me introduce you to our Programmer for September ’09, Varun Jalan!

Name: Varun Jalan
Age: 21
Institute: Columbia University

UserID: syco
1. How/When did you start programming?
I learnt Q Basic around 8 years back. However, I’ve known C for only about 5 years. I started learning algorithms around two and a half years back. My brother taught me C (though I was very, very reluctant to learn that time )

2. What do you do when you’re not programming?
Mostly surfing the net and reading books.

3. What do you like most about CodeChef?
The prizes definitely . A couple of problems in each contest are really good, though in my opinion they are too tough to be a part of any contest of duration <= 5 hours.

4. How many hours a day do you program?
That varies greatly. Can range from 0 – 15 hours a day.

5. What’s your favourite book and why?
I read books like the Harry Potter series, Lord of the Rings etc. Amongst algorithms and programming stuff, I like The C programming language(Kernighan and Ritche), CLRS.

6. If you could eat dinner with any famous person (past or present), who would it be and what dish would you have?
Never given it a thought Perhaps share a pizza with Einstein ? lol

7. What are your plans for the future?
I ll be completing my MS at Columbia Univ. by next December. I’ll mostly be working after that, though I still am considering PhD as an option.

No surprises with this announcement, right? Anshuman has been a force to reckon with on CodeChef since the very beginning. He’s won the March, April and May challenge back to back and because of his excellent performance, he even interned with us at Directi during the summer (of course, the ulterior motive was to stop him from winning through June and July )

Without further ado, here’s Anshuman, our Programmer of the Month for August 2009!

Name: Anshuman Singh
Age: 21
Institute: IIIT, Hyderabad
Userid: anshuman_singh
Twitter ID: anshuman26

Brief introduction about yourself (under 140 characters):
A pretty normal guy with high expectations from life.

How/When did you start programming?
I started programming when I was in high school but wasn’t very serious about it till my first year in college. That was the time when I was influenced to some extent by my seniors and managed to get a little guidance from them. From then on, it gradually changed from a mere interest to a passion.

What do you do when you’re not programming?
I’d definitely be watching a movie or some sitcom. I am a big movie buff. I frequently (on weekends or on some occasion skipping classes) take a day out watching movies/show on a full trot. I, along with my friends, have planned numerous night outs where we continuously watch movies and then sleep throughout the day.

What do you like most about CodeChef?
Prizes. To be very honest, almost everything. The problem set is nice along with the organization. I am really thankful to the CodeChef team for having something like this and let us be a part of it.

How many hours a day do you program?
Depends. It varies from 7-8 hours of programming to nothing at all. The numbers increase when preparing for ICPC or something similar.

What’s your favourite book and why?
I am not much of a book guy. Course books are already a lot to contend with . Anyhow, I did enjoy reading Harry Potter (All volumes).

If you could eat dinner with any famous person (past or present), who would it be and what dish would you have?
For Dinner, Megan Fox definitely . Donald Knuth is someone whom I would like to meet personally. Dish: Anything works.

What are your plans for the future?
Not sure at all. I will probably go for higher studies to work on something challenging.

Starting this July we’re going to feature individuals that stand out from amongst the rest on CodeChef as the “Programmer of the Month”. Every month we will nominate one individual, who we think deserves a special mention.

And the Programmer of the Month for July is Keshav!

You must be wondering why Keshav is the Programmer of the Month without winning any of the CodeChef Challenges. He was surprised as well. : ) The reason why we’re so impressed with Keshav is because he is all of seventeen years old! Without a formal degree this young programmer has stood 7th in the June Algorithm challenge. Well done, Keshav!

Name: Keshav Dhandhania
Age: 17
Institute: Lakshmipat Singhania Academy, Kolkata.
CodeChef Userid: keshav_57

Brief introduction about yourself (under 140 characters):
Nothing very special about me. Just a usual school kid I guess, who was fortunate enough to receive some good guidance from people around him.

How/When did you start programming?
A cousin of mine introduced me to TopCoder in 2007 when he saw some of my prizes in math Olympiad. Since then, I have pretty much given up math for programming.

What do you do when you’re not programming?
Spend time with friends, watch a movie or a sport, listen to music and play some online games.

What do you like most about CodeChef?
The prizes top the list. The problems which I cannot solve come next!

How many hours a day do you program?
Depends. On a usual basis I program for a couple of hours a day. Currently, I’m putting in more hours because I need to practice for IOITC.

What’s your favourite book and why?
No favorite. I like books on neurology, and novels are always welcome!

If you could eat dinner with any famous person (past or present), who would it be and what dish would you have?
Person: Chuck Norris?
Dish: Anything from the Chef would be great.

What are your plans for the future?
Have not thought about it very seriously. I won’t leave competing for sure.