CodeChef has been serving the competitive programming community for a very long time. Today, incidentally on the occasion of our 72nd Independence Day, we make a digression. We are excited to announce that we have something for our developer community too!
All this while, we have seen many enthusiastic CodeCheffers, taking the pain of scraping the CodeChef website and creating various really cool and useful stuff out of it. This has made us go one step further and provide all our beloved developers and programmers with the power to turn their ideas into reality much more easily.
So here we announce the launch of the CodeChef API Hackathon powered by Alibaba Cloud.
What is CodeChef API?
CodeChef API is an OAuth 2.0 HTTP API, which exposes CodeChef resources and data to the developers. You will get to know all the details about the API once the contest starts.
Why?
There are things that we want to do and cannot do on our own. And, there are things that we do not even know and can be done. This is where the awesome community comes in. We have seen numerous enthusiastic users who scrape our website to build stuff that does wonders.
We believe that the API now opens up new opportunities for our fellow developers from the community, and will help them build useful and relevant apps which can help the growing community.
CodeChef API – The internship project
It started way back in 2015, when two of the community members proposed to us an idea of making a CodeChef Android app and we were so convinced that we immediately wanted them to get started. Yes you read that right, an Android app! We will get to that story some other time.
Soon we realised that it would be much better to have an API first and then build the app. Since then, there have been many changes in our priorities and despite being partly ready to launch the API, we couldn’t give it to you.
Now
We thank Alibaba Cloud, who liked our idea of an API for the community and supported us in being able to bring this API to you. It gives us immense pleasure to let you know that via our First Hackathon, we are presenting you a brand new CodeChef API that you can consume and you can also build your apps and deploy them on the Alibaba cloud.
Interns & Internship
We have always been proud of our interns and always try to have them throughout the year. They are the packets of energy and enthusiasm which fuel the overall work ethics of the team. CodeChef API was one such project and we thank all our interns who have contributed to the project in some way or the other – Vikesh Tiwari (aka vicky), Shivam Khandelwal (aka skbly), Prabhat Awasthi (aka hacker_ratty) and Shivangi Gupta (aka shivangi_gupta -_- ). Go, hound them!
And with this, we also extend a chance to grab an internship opportunity to all the users who come up with great ideas and implement them.
Looking forward to it…
Cheers,
Abhijeet
The most awaited flagship global coding competition by CodeChef will unfold the curtains to its onsite round in February next year. After successfully completing its four editions and witnessing participation from over 29K programmers in SnackDown 2017, we can say that SnackDown has come a long way since its inception in 2010.
We have been bombarded with questions by the community who were eagerly wanting to know the dates for SnackDown this year. We are here to put an end to all these speculations. Coming to the answer you’re all looking forward to: the online rounds will kickoff in October 2018 and on-site finals will take place in February 2019. We’ll post the final schedule for SnackDown in September, so watch this space!
Oleg Merkurev of Ural Federal University and Aleksei Daniliuk of NRU Higher School of Economics from Russia raised the trophy of SnackDown and claimed a cash prize of $10,000Till now the final round of SnackDown has been an onsite event hosted in India in the month of June-July. This is also the time of heavy monsoons in major parts of the country. To not let the extreme weather come in our way of hosting a glorious finale on Indian soil we decided to keep it in the month of February of 2019.
Stay tuned for more updates to our facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/CodeChef/
Till then, do let us know your thoughts by writing on the comment section below or you can even write to us at: feedback@codechef.com
Cheers!
Team CodeChef
We are happy to announce ShareChat as our official sponsors of our monthly contests.
ShareChat is a social network for the next billion smartphone users. They have grown organically to 18 million active users and are doubling every 4 months. Currently, their userbase is majorly from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Canada and are expanding at a very rapid pace.
With the volume of users that they are handling comes the challenges of scale. And, that makes them a very exciting technology startup to work for. If you are someone who yearns to be a part of the startup culture and a great technology team then you have another reason to participate in our monthly contests.
ShareChat has been supporting us for a while now, and we hope that together with them we will bring more exciting opportunities for the programming community.
We hope this collaboration will be mutually beneficial and also help the community going forward in multiple ways. Wishing you all the best!
Cheers!
The Chef
What is happening?
In light of the recent discussions in the community over plagiarism charges and how this has affected our users and their ratings, we are taking a few steps to restore order in the universe (and to maintain fairness on our platform). Below, we outline the actions we are taking and the motivations behind them.
What action is being taken?
For users whose ratings have been dropped to zero following plagiarism charges, we are increasing the rating by a maximum of 800. We have also ensured that user is penalized by at least of a rating difference of 750.
Formally, we are increasing the rating of all those users by X, where X = minimum of 800 and (Y-750) and Y = previous rating before dropping their rating to 0. We guarantee that X is non-negative.
Why is this action being taken?
You may have been following the discussions taking place in our community over the issue.
Multiple users whose ratings had dropped to zero following plagiarism charges came to us with the concern that such a massive drop in ratings reduces their incentive to participate in contests.
The second concern was that it would take quite a long time for such users to regain their previous ratings.
Finally, some of the users with zero rating who had performed better than those with much higher ratings were getting less rating increments, which they found demotivating.
We understand that many of you felt that the decision to drop ratings was harsh and hasty. It was also pointed out to us that because the drop was not implemented after every contest, it was essentially unfair and did not give all users a fair chance to regain their ratings. After hearing from you all on the issue and brainstorming with our panel and moderators, we have come to this decision. We believe that it is the best way to address your concerns while maintaining as much fairness as possible.
How will plagiarism cases be handled in the future?
For all the future plagiarism scenarios, with each cheating attempt, we will decrease the rating of the user by 750 points flat (however ensuring that the rating doesn’t become negative). There will be no reconsideration or changes in our rating system to handle users with zero rating. No requests for leniency in this regard will be considered.
Further, we will be handling the cheating cases month by month without making any delays in the penalty.
We understand how much it affects our community when we have to take such actions. There is also a likelihood that many honest users get unnecessarily affected by the actions of a few. Do understand that plagiarism is an issue that deeply affects us all and we are trying our best to come up with new ways of combating it and making our community a better and safer place for all of you. As always, we’re there to listen to your suggestions.
Happy coding!
The Chef
For Sujeet Sawala, an engineering student from Pune, tackling programming sets in front of a screen held as much interest as weaving past pawns and bishops on a chessboard. But it was the drive to learn more each day that fuelled his passion to be a better coder. Sujeet never wanted to start his job hunt but armed with his humble and dedicated approach towards programming, and learning on the whole, today he is placed in Directi through his CCDSAP certification.
But his journey started a long time back, during his college days, where he explored online contests and took to competitive programming like a fish to water. Here is an excerpt from the session we had with Sujeet about his experience with competitive programming.
Get to know me!
1. Tell us about yourself!
Hi. I’m Sujeet. I’m currently studying Computer engineering in my final year at Pune Institute Of Computer Technology, Pune. I am interested in programming and like solving complex problems. I also enjoy playing Chess. I’m an Internationally rated chess player with a FIDE rating of 1725.
2. When did you actively begin competitive programming? What did you like about it?
It was during my 3rd Semester that I explored contests with online judges and also ACM-ICPC. Since then, I gradually and actively started competitive programming. I especially liked the data structures and algorithms part of competitive programming and the challenges they throw. The logical abilities developed by attempting and overcoming those challenges are always helpful.
About CCDSAP
3. What was your motivation behind taking the CCDSAP?
I regularly participated in CodeChef Long Challenges. I was placed first on the college leaderboard. I was particularly interested in testing my skills and knowledge in a program which would also provide me a certification. That was one of the motivators for taking the CCDSAP. I was happy to learn that I scored 1000 out of 1000 in the CCDSAP in the very first attempt!
4. What specific feature did you like most about the CCDSAP? (Is there anything different that isn’t offered in other certifications?)
According to me, CCDSAP is the only program that offers certifications in Data Structures and Algorithms through programming contests. This makes it a unique certification program.
5. How did you prepare for the CCDSAP? (Any tips for beginners?)
I regularly used to practice algorithmic problems on various online judges like CodeChef, Codeforces, Hackerearth, Hackerrank, Lightoj etc. This ensured that my preparation for CCDSAP was thorough.
6. Tell us in brief about your interview process with Directi!
My interview process consisted of three interviews based on Data Structures and Algorithms. After I cleared these rounds, there was a final technical interview round. It was based on the projects done, and computer science related concepts like operating systems, databases, networking, etc.
Feedback
7. How can the overall CCDSAP exam experience be improved?
I felt the level of questions could be upgraded a notch higher so that the CCDSAP could gear up to be even more challenging.
8. Would you recommend the CCDSAP to friends/colleagues? If so, why?
Indeed. It is a good program to test one’s skills and knowledge across a wider community. The certification is a valuable one. Moreover, it helps get an interview with Directi 
Cheers!
The Chef
tl;dr: We missed on warming our cache servers which we had added a day earlier, this allowed most of the traffic to hit the database server, thus overloading it. This then led to some users not being shown the problems, and finally, everybody’s Saturday was ruined.
Right before a contest begins, our HQ looks just like a control centre for a rocket launch. All our eyes are glued to our terminals, monitoring the vital statistics of our contests and making sure everything is functioning smoothly. And just like a rocket launch, we still have a lot to be tense about even after counting down to zero. Sometimes things go wrong even after the contest is well underway.
It’s kind of like being a football goalkeeper. Even after so many successful contests, sometimes all we can remember are the times things didn’t work out. And LTIME58 is another such memory for us and our dedicated community.
Right before the contest began, we went through all the pre-launch checks. Checkers, problems, testing, all ready to go. At about T-30 minutes, we started observing some unusual behaviours. Emails informing us about pressflow errors started dropping in from our users who were very hopeful and excited about the contest. We made the necessary fixes and by 7:30 PM, we believed we had it all under control.
Remember, it’s just like a rocket launch. Sometimes, the strangest of things go wrong at the worst of times. We watched perplexed as our DB load increased to 100%, while at the same time our inboxes started exploding with our users informing us that the problems weren’t visible. We like to pride ourselves on setting up difficult contests but one with invisible problems would be a touch too difficult, wouldn’t it?
Our initial assumption was that problems were visible to none of the users. But when we received some submissions, we realised that the problem was not affecting all users. In fact, our service that fetched contest problems had stopped. It was evident that high load had caused this, but we were still unaware of the reason for this unusual load. Going through the logs and patterns of requests, we realised it was not any kind of attack. However, by the time we closed off that possibility, it was already 8:00 PM, thirty minutes past the contest start time. When all of our efforts to reduce the DB load proved fruitless, we had to reschedule the contest for the following day. Ultimately, we could not continue when so many of our community members had faced an issue. With an extremely heavy heart, we declared the contest as unrated.
CodeChef has, quite literally, been about learning from problems. As we do with every instance of an error, we carried out a complete investigation of our application, system, and database logs and noticed that read and write operations were increasing exponentially while cache misses spiked. As it turns out, we had swapped our cache instances a day before. The new cache servers, although they had been in use along with old servers for the past couple of weeks, had not fully warmed up. This led to direct calls being made to databases due to cache misses. The issue spiralled until it ended up spoiling what would have been a perfectly fun way of spending a Saturday.
Well, the only reason we can fly around in rockets today is because for a hundred years humans have analysed every failed rocket to make a better one. That’s also what we do at the CodeChef HQ here, we learn from our mistakes (and then post about it on the Internet so that you don’t have to make mistakes to learn the same thing!). Our sincere apologies to our community that was affected by the outage. We remain committed to bringing you the best and most fun coding experience online and have taken steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. We are also thankful for the extended support of our community during such times.
We really look forward to our next contest and hope to see you all there.
Happy coding!
The Chef
Anuj Sankla, Teach for India Fellow, Cohort 2016 shares his experience of teaching the students of class 8 and 9 of a government school in Delhi. This was as a part of the summer programming workshop conducted by CodeChef. The workshop was aimed to teach these young minds programming having no prior knowledge of the same. Do read on his interesting journey.
A new school, new students and a new subject! A new environment to teachers may look just as daunting as it looks to the students. Yes, I am a teacher who was appointed to light a spark in a set of 22 students at a different school and teach a subject which I had never taught before.
I am talking about CodeChef’s initiative to inculcate logical reasoning and aspects of competitive programming in school students. The target set was huge; IOI – International Olympiad in informatics, is the most prestigious championship for student coders and CodeChef had been observing a pattern in it for quite some time. They could see India wasn’t striking gold (weren’t winning the Olympiad). Comparing Indian teams with the countries that won gold, they zeroed in and established that the secret to gold lies in an early start. Therefore, they took up the task to start nurturing young minds with the nuances of competitive programming right from school.
I was working as a Teach For India fellow when they approached me. The TFI experience had taught me to handle a class, develop a culture and to get the desired outputs from the students. I said yes to the challenge.
And here’s where we are. First day at the school, I too was nervous. I didn’t know how the kids would respond, if they would listen to me, whether they would be ready to learn? Amid all these doubts I entered the class and was greeted warmly by these 22 kids. Most of my nervousness was already gone by the welcoming nature of their greeting. I started with my plan and as decided, I planned to start with a fun energiser right after a round of quick introduction. The energiser was quite crazy and required all the kids to do weird moves. They were reluctant, they didn’t budge. “Was I being judged?” I asked myself. “This works so well in my classroom, why isn’t it working here?”. I nudged them a little, and then decided to demonstrate all the steps to the class; I was being too vulnerable. But, it worked. It worked like a charm. They opened up. They started to move. Some of them danced, some didn’t. We went for another round of energiser; most of them were enjoying it now. The class was refreshed. “Plan so far a success” I thought.
After all the dancing and shaking, I started with the class. Why coding? What is IOI? Why are we here? And after all these questions we moved into something which was new for the kids as well as for me. For kids, as they had never studied it. For me, because I had never taught it to anyone.
Number system, binary, decimal, conversions were all being discussed in the class. Some understood, some were confused and some were probably questioning their decision of attending these classes during their summer break. But soon, the classroom turned into a pool of enthusiastic innovators who were trying to figure out different patterns in binary numbers. They wanted to break it down. I was glad as I wanted them to do the same. Soon, they became comfortable with number systems and we ended the class with a mind boggling puzzle. The day went well . I was glad the plan worked as I wanted it to.
Next day, another warm greeting; this time I could feel even more warmth. The kids had accepted me and so had I. We started the class with another energiser. This time almost everyone was engaged. They had started enjoying these sessions. Soon, energisers were part of my daily lessons.
And when missed, the kids themselves reminded me that we should have energisers now. They had opened up, they had started showing curiosity, and began working in groups. Almost all of them had started to question and most importantly they had started to struggle; struggle without giving up. I think that was what I really wanted them to achieve.
We dived deep into the content, and began tackling operations, flowcharts, loops, lists, more flowcharts, more dry runs . And during the process both (kids and I) of us learnt. We learnt amazing concepts, we solved problems, and figured out how a problem can have multiple solutions. We saw how to find out an error in your solutions and even solved puzzles . And once they were well-versed with the content, it was time for a test. The kids made their way to the computer lab. They had to start coding in Python. Python, which was just a reptile to them till then, had suddenly turned into something with which they could build with the computers.
Our Python classes started with the basic commands of input and print. And much to their joy, the kids were already celebrating seeing that their code could print their name on the screen. Little did they know that they had a lot more to explore. We soon started getting into the concepts of operations, loops, lists and what not. Sometimes, the kids would figure out some untold concepts and commands on their own. It felt like we had achieved what we aimed for. They were now ready to learn on their own. We had developed in them a desire to learn, and now they would go on to explore and satiate their hunger for more knowledge.
Soon after they had started to code, we introduced them to the CodeChef online judge and held an online contest, with their rank lists being projected on the wall. They’d quickly have a look at the ranks and then get onto their computers and start solving the problems. You could see the joy in their eyes as they saw their ranks going up with every correct attempt . And disappointment on their face could easily be spotted when their friends solved the questions and moved above the rank list, leaving them below. Soon, contests too were as much a part of our daily classes as energisers and puzzles.
And before I could sense, the 15 day workshop came to an end. There was a final contest, and certificates were distributed to the young geniuses. I also gave them a handwritten “words to inspire” message. As we declared the end of the workshop, I could hear “We’ll miss you”, “You have been a great teacher “ , “When will you come to meet us again?” , “I’ll connect with you on Facebook” and much more. I waved goodbye to the kids, feeling a true sense of joy and accomplishment being able to affect their lives for the better, even if for only a fortnight.
On my way back, as I am writing this, I wonder how easy it is for people to connect with someone. At one point, we don’t know each other and then the next moment, we trust each other and feel comfortable around them. I will really miss these kids and the workshop. I would love to relive this experience again.
~Tschüss
Anuj Sankla
Fellow , Cohort 2016
Teach For India
+91 8130811961
On the eve of Women’s Day, we had the opportunity to interact with a talented female coder from India, Anushi Maheshwari (anushi), whose coding prowess and unflinching focus is breaking gender boundaries. We all have a different story about how each of us started to code, and this time we bring to you Anushi’s coding journey. As a girl who learned programming skills in school, Anushi tells us of the sheer determination and hardwork that has made her achieve success in this field dominated by ‘hims’.
Tell us something about yourself!
I am a final year student pursuing Electronics Engineering at Harcourt Butler Technical University, Kanpur.
When and how did you develop an interest in coding?
I knew JAVA since 10th grade but because of lack of a personal laptop and an internet connection, it was very late before I started competitive coding.The first challenge I participated seriously was the October Long Challenge 2016 when I was 18 but it was during the previous year’s summer vacation when I had better internet at my disposal that I spent improving myself, actively participating in May and June Long Challenges.
What sparked your interest in the field of competitive programming?
I always had a liking for it. When I first learned programming, I used to think of the best way of doing that and that’s how I went forward. Later I was fascinated with the amazing CodeChef Platform. For me, the best thing about CodeChef is their long challenge and goodies I also like the concept of hacks on Codeforces.
Any obstacles that you faced?
The coding environment is something that hindered my growth because I couldn’t find anyone to help me with the problems I faced initially and the major reason behind this was that there were not many girl coders (and only a few boys were good in CP) in HBTI. Another roadblock was my branch (Electronics Engineering). Till today, I have a tough time juggling between the 75% attendance required in Electronics classes and my self-taught Computer Science subjects. But when so many people tackle such issues, why can’t I? 
How did you overcome these obstacles?
It took me a while to realize that no magic is going to happen to help me understand algorithms. I had only me. I made a habit of not giving up on any topic until I understood it. I repeated read about the topic from different sources, ran that code in debug mode and saw if I made any progress. If not, I turned to messaging some great coders on Codeforces and I can bet you that 2 out of 5 are always there to help you if you ask a genuine doubt (not a problem of running contest).
Your views on the gender imbalance in competitive programming?
There is no doubt in the fact that there are very few women coders (only 3-4) in top 100 but I think CodeChef is doing it’s best in reducing the gender diversity by giving some extra opportunities to women
Your message to other women in the field?
The best way to learn to code is solving problems. But don’t always solve easier ones, try to grasp something new with every problem you practice. For this, I think it’s better to practice those next level problems which you were unable to do in the contest other than randomly selecting by yourself. Also, you can connect to me anytime for problems you face and I assure you of my reply (It could take a day or two if I am busy with other stuff but not more than that).
—
Her story is a simple reflection of the complexities associated with all females trying to come up in the competitive programming world and is truly an example for us all. Team CodeChef appreciates her dedication and perseverance to keep her competitive programming flag flying high amidst all the difficulties she faced and wishes her good luck in all her future endeavours.
Ruchika
Team CodeChef
She wasn’t like the others. In programming, she found her true friend. There was no ambiguity. No sad moments. She asked questions through lines of code, and it would answer promptly, every single time. There was so much to know about it too. Every day, she learnt more about its functions, the libraries it read from, the indentation that looked best on it, and the objects without which it wouldn’t run. Literally. And the best part? It knew an astonishing number of languages! Just as she googled about the languages and who created them, she was surprised to find out that nearly all of them were written by boys. Her heart sank a little. That night, as she slid into bed, one question kept her awake –
Can’t I go on to teach it a language of my own?
Coding is for the intelligent, creative, hard working individuals — male or female, yet it is an established fact that there are very less women who take it up professionally or who are interested in competitive programming. Young women across the globe are still facing a tough, rough road in the tech industry.
Women have faced difficulty in fitting in the ‘brogramming’ culture, as it is popularly called. There are multiple instances wherein women feel the lack of role models/mentors and peer to peer engagement in this field. They are attributed as major reasons for the lack of women in programming. Yet, in spite of roadblocks, the programming community is witness to many diligent girls who, with sheer determination, independently give life to their successful coding journey. Team CodeChef has immense respect for such talent and appreciate their zeal and enthusiasm. Here is a list of few top female programmers on our platform who have it in them to become role models as a source of inspiration to other female aspirants:
| CodeChef User | Country | Global Rank | Country Rank |
| Kirika Yuumura (kirika_comp) | Japan | 187 | 17 |
| Alexandra (demon1999) | Russia | 207 | 19 |
| Ania Piekarska (ania7) | Poland | 207 | 4 |
| Andrey Nekrashevich (xolm) | Belarus | 254 | 11 |
| Z. Shi (shizhouxing) | China | 309 | 48 |
| Olesya Golub (taube) | Russia | 309 | 28 |
| Aidyn Aluadin (aidyn12) | Kazakhstan | 316 | 5 |
| Vladimir Chalyshev (cmd) | Russia | 352 | 32 |
| Malvika Raj Joshi (meteora) | India | 359 | 86 |
The programming world has, hidden beneath its fabric, several gender disparities at play. It’s unrealistic to think these perceptions will change over night but I think we ought to embrace the reality and use it to our own advantage. Here are some statistics that highlight this issue quite transparently:
Although these numbers are registering an improving trend worldwide, there is a lot that needs to be done by the community to push it further.
‘In college, when I was considering being a CS major, the male programming students I talked to shook their heads and said “Don’t do it. You’ll be the only girl there.‘
- Grace Ng, Co-Founder, Javelin.com (Source: Quora)
Unfortunately, Grace is not the only one who is facing this issue. Thousands of girls worldwide have taken to the internet as a platform to share their similar experiences. Imposter syndrome is a common psychological effect that affects the top coders too. It is the feeling of not being good enough which is stereotypically imbibed in a person belonging to a group. Girls surrounded by males in a professional environment or in any competing environment crumble due to lack of confidence owing to a culture bias plastered deep in their minds.
Many organizations are sprouting all over the world to find solutions and plans for engaging more females in the field of Computer Science. This Women’s Day, CodeChef would also like to celebrate the coding achievements of women on our platform and encourage more women to come and try their hands on competitive programming. We have special prizes for women participants in the ongoing March long challenge.
Also, on this day of woman, we urge you to take a responsible step in empowering your fellow female coders and the entire community at large, to promise an open, inviting approach to all who would love to code. Every single one of us is part of this beautiful community, including you. Thus, we’d be delighted if you could spare a few minutes and fill out this survey about your views: goo.gl/forms/KkCTa2IjXf1YCx6B2.
Happy Coding!
Ruchika,
Team CodeChef
As you all know, Chef loves to dish out new enhancements during his birthday month, and this time, he’s cooked up something special which many of you have been asking for – a Rating Divisions system!
Users are now divided into two Divisions based on their overall CodeChef rating.
All CodeChef contests (Long Challenges, Cook-Offs and LunchTimes) will now have two parallel contests, one for Division 1 and another for Division 2. A user can participate in only the Division that she belongs to.
The Division 2 contest will have some more easier problems, whereas the Division 1 contest will have a few more harder ones. This means that beginners get to practice on more easier problems, whereas the higher rated users will skip some of the easy problems and focus on solving the harder ones. A Win-Win situation, if ever there was one!
The ratings will be calculated only within your own Division, and hence will be a better reflection of your true skill level.
Also, we can now have more External Rated Contests, which will be rated only for Division 2 users. The Chef has also introduced Unofficial Participation, through which Division 1 users can also submit in such contests, but it will not affect their rating.
And last, but not the least, we hope that it will be further motivation for users to improve their performance and get to compete with the elite!
Head over here to know more about this system.
Cheers,
The Chef
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