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

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

Dear Contestants,

Considering the issues that occurred in the recent contests, we have implemented a new notification feature on CodeChef. In the last short contest some of you were unaware of the changed problem statements and as a result had to suffer with unwanted penalties. While we understand that such scenarios should be best avoided and we strive to eliminate them completely, yet at times we do end up making mistakes. However, to notify all the users instantly is the least that we think we can do to make it fair to all.

As per this new feature, whenever there is an announcement made in any contest or when the admins want to notify you of some event, every logged in user will get a notification in the form of an alert box.

Regards,
Vishal

PS: We are testing this feature on the website for some time. For this reason you may see an alert box while browsing CodeChef.

Hi guys,

It’s almost time for new year’s and CodeChef is dressing itself up for the big occasion. We’re adding some very exciting new features to the site, one of them being a brand new rating system for the CookOff’s!

Be a part of the CodeChef CookOff that takes place this Saturday at 21:30hrs IST and get rated.

P.S. The ranks of this CookOff will contribute to the short contest rating. This rating will be independant of the long contests.

Cheers,

Basil Skariah

Our Mail System was down and registrations were stuck. The issue has been resolved. Please use “Login | Forgot Password” to get the password mail again. If you are still facing any issues please mail to feedback@codechef.com. The inconvenience is deeply regretted.

Cheers,
Vishal

Hi CodeCheffers,

The October 2010 Challenge is now over and it’s time to announce the results

But before we do that we shall like to share some Fun Facts about this contest:

1. Special mention to Oleg who stood 1st two times in a row.
2. We have 8 people tied at 13th place.
3. This month we have 4 Indians featured in the Global Top 20 winners.
4. Also this time around we have 6 new faces in the Global Top 20 and they are:
   Srivatsan, Balrog, LiPengcheng, Miroshnichenko Yaroslav, Rushel, Vladislav Isenbaev.
5. This contest has seen the maximum Unique Visitors ever at CodeChef.

Contest Statistics:

And now the leader-board of the October 2010 contest:

India:

01. Yash (winner of prize money Rs. 12000)
02. Nadeem Moidu (winner of prize money Rs. 8000)
03. Srivatsan
04. Surendra Meena
05. Vamsi Kavala
06. Gunjan Sharma
07. Sunny Agrawal
08. Pradeep George Mathias
09. Kaushik Iska
10. Sudipto Das
11. Govardhan Reddy
11. Ishan Dutta
11. Nitin Kumar
11. Baljeet Kumar
11. Vikas
16. Pankaj kumar
16. Girish Kadli
16. Anil Kishore
16. Ishani Parekh
20. Paresh Verma

Global:

01. Oleg (winner of prize money $400)
02. Mark Greve (winner of prize money $300)
03. Lai Luhang
04. Wu Yin
05. Tomaz Hocevar
06. Anton Lunyov
07. Stephen Merriman
08. Balrog
09. LiPengcheng
10. Trinh Tuan Phuong

Congratulations to all.

If you haven’t yet checked out the editorials of the problems to this month’s contest please do so here.

On the 15th of October we are running a 2.5 hours Cook-Off and Warm Up Contest that is organized by Directi Go for Gold Initiative in collaboration with the IIT Kanpur regionals.

If there is anything that you would like to let us know then do comment on this blog post or send in an email to feedback@codechef.com

Cheers,
Basil

P.S. Winners will be contacted shortly.

Hi CodeCheffers,

The Amritapuri warm up Contest has ended and with over 350 teams that registered we have the following top 10 teams on the leader board:

01. ANY Dream
02. Proof
03. pho3nix
04. madhav_iiith
05. pseud
06. TheFallen
07. coderush
08. knighttemplars
09. bigone
10. ){:|:&};:

Contest Statistics:

We regret having some major issues at our end during the contest. We definitely have a lot to learn and are aiming to amend all our flaws before the next team contests. For this we sincerely need your help.

Please send us your feedback about the Amritapuri Warm Up Contest either by commenting on this blog post or by sending in an email to icpc@am.amrita.edu or feedback@codechef.com with the subject as “WARMUP CONTEST FEEDBACK”.

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