Greetings CodeCheffers,

In order to make your programming endevours more interesting, we have added the following new languages to CodeChef :

1.) Clojure (clojure-1.1.0)
2.) Go (gc-2010-07-14)
3.) Python3 (python-3.1.2)
4.) Fsharp (fsharp-2.0.0)
5.) Perl6 (rakudo-2010.08)

These languages will appear in the language selection drop down on the solution submission page. Also Bash and Perl Languages have been updated to bash-3.2.29 and perl-5.12.1.

Some perl submissions which were made before the upgrade may not work with the new version due to compatibility issues.

So now along these new languages, these are the 48 programming languages that CodeChef supports

1.) ADA 95 (gnat-4.3.2)
2.) Assembler (nasm-2.03.01)
3.) Bash (bash-3.2.29)
4.) Brainf**k (bff-1.0.3.1)
5.) C (gcc-4.3.2)
6.) C# (gmcs-2.0.1)
7.) C++ (gcc-4.0.0-8)
8.) C++ (gcc-4.3.2)
9.) C99 strict (gcc 4.3.2)
10.) Clips (clips-6.24)
11.) Clojure (clojure-1.1.0)
12.) Common Lisp (clisp-2.44.1)
13.) Common Lisp (sbcl-1.0.18)
14.) D (gdc-4.1.3)
15.) Erlang (erlang-5.6.3)
16.) F# (fsharp-2.0.0)
17.) Fortran (gfortran-4.3.2)
18.) Go (gc-2010-07-14)
19.) Haskell (ghc-6.10.4)
20.) Icon (iconc-9.4.3)
21.) Intercal (ick-0.28-4)
22.) JAR (javac-1.6.0_12)
23.) Java (javac-1.6.0_12)
24.) JavaScript (rhino 1.7R1-2)
25.) Lua (luac-5.1.3)
26.) Nemerle (ncc-0.9.3)
27.) Nice (nice-0.9.6)
28.) Ocaml (ocamlopt-3.10.2)
29.) Pascal (fpc-2.2.4)
30.) Pascal (gpc-20070904)
31.) PDF
32.) Perl (perl-5.12.1)
33.) Perl6 (rakudo-2010.08)
34.) PHP (php-5.2.6)
35.) Pike (pike-7.6.112)
36.) PostScript
37.) Prolog (swipl-5.6.58)
38.) Python (python-2.5)
39.) Python3 (python-3.1.2)
40.) Ruby (ruby-1.9.0)
41.) Scala (scala-2.8.0)
42.) Scheme (stalin-0.11)
43.) Scheme (guile-1.8.5)
44.) Smalltalk (gst-3.0.3)
45.) Tcl (tclsh-8.5.3)
46.) Text (pure text)
47.) Whitespace (wspace-0.2)
48.) Word

Happy Programming,
Tojo Chacko

We are happy to announce that the March Challenge Contest (MARCH11) has been extended and rescheduled. The contest will begin at 12/03 18:00 (Indian Standard Time) and will be running for 24 hours till 13/03 18:00 (Indian Standard Time). Those who have missed out on the last minutes submissions, now is your chance to do so. Hopefully there will be no more hiccups from the judge and we expect the contest will run smoothly.

We are afraid we have lost some submissions, in case you face any issues please send a mail to help@codechef.com.

Good Luck,
tojo chacko

Dear CodeCheffers,

We are back again. The CodeChef judge is up and working now. You can continue making your submissions. We will keep you updated on the extension of the contest. We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused.

11/03/2011 15:00 (IST) UPDATE: Contest will end temporarily and will be restarted for 24 hours as soon as we have our Judge up and running. We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused.

12/03/2011 14:20 (IST) UPDATE: CodeChef judge is back up and running smoothly. You can continue making your submissions. For people participating in the March Challenge, we will let you know about the extension of the contest shortly. Please check our announcements page for any updates. We regret the inconvenience caused.

– tojo

Welcome to the 2010 – 2011 Programmer of the Year blog post.

CodeChef has completed 2 years now and we’d like to thank everyone for making it so successful. Someone that we would love to highlight this month is Zac Friggstad for his invaluable and continuous contribution to CodeChef as a Problem Setter, Tester and Moderator.

Zac has been on our problem setting panel since the beginning of last year and has been doing a fantastic job for us at CodeChef.

Lets take a look at his contributions in all our contest last year:

Since April 2010, Zac has been part of our contest moderation panel every single month. In this duration he has acted as a problem tester 4 times, set 8 challenge problems and 12 other long contests problems and has been the author for our CookOffs 3 times already!

Zac has been our specialist in setting the Challenge problem for a while now, and though he’s never participated in our programming contests, we would like to bestow the title of Programmer of the Year for 2010-2011. On behalf of CodeChef, we’d like to thank Zac, for all the contributions he has made to the programming community so far and hope he continues to do so.  :)

Here’s more from the programmer of the Year himself:

Name:  Zachary Friggstad
Age:  28
Institute:  The University of Alberta
Webpage: http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~zacharyf/

Brief introduction about yourself:

I’m currently in the 4th year of my PhD studies at the U of Alberta where I study the theory behind efficient algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems. Most of the problems I study are NP-hard so I focus mainly on approximation algorithms. I also enjoy pure mathematics; I almost chose to do my graduate studies in mathematics instead of CS. A few very helpful professors showed me how even advanced tools from mathematics can be used to study algorithms and the theory of computing, so I started a graduate degree in theoretical computing science instead. I am also one of the coaches for our ACM
ICPC team at the U of Alberta and I’m proud to say that we have qualified for the World Finals once again!

The other major part of my life is my family. I have been married to Jenne for almost 7 years now and we now have two boys named Gabriel (3 years) and Lucas (6 months).

How/When did you start programming?

I learned BASIC at school when I was 15 years old. My school was small and we didn’t have any teachers who knew how to instruct the course, so I had to take it by correspondence under the supervision of a teacher at a distant school. For the most part, this consisted of me reading through his course notes and occasionally meeting via ICQ.

What do you do when you’re not programming?

If I’m at home, I’m either playing board/card games with my wife, playing with my boys, watching a movie or playing video games. I’ve also been known to read about interesting topics in algebra, topology, and number theory that I don’t encounter often in my everyday research. Our favourite family vacation is to go tenting on a warm and sunny weekend and I also like playing volleyball and badminton when I get the chance.

What do you like most about CodeChef?

The ability to set problems that can’t appear in the normal ACM-style competition. I enjoy creating very hard problems that are still feasible in the CodeChef setting, but require a fair amount of thinking and maybe even some research to solve. I also like the tie breaking problems as they give me a chance to present optimization problems I’ve encountered in research literature in a more concrete setting.

How many hours a day do you program?

Apart from CodeChef, probably less than one hour since most of my research is theoretical. This definitely increases when I’m preparing problems for a contest.

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

I would eat sushi with Paul Erdos.

What is the secret to being a good programmer?

Practice is the key, but you have to know where to look. Try hard problems and don’t be afraid to spend a lot of time learning new algorithms. Always be on the lookout to learn new things. Also, random bits can be your friends

What are your plans for the future?

I hope to graduate either this year or next. Ultimately, I am looking to settle at a university as a professor with both research and teaching responsibilities. Hopefully this also includes involvement in a programming contest club too! However, I expect that I will be a postdoctoral researcher for a while after I graduate since there aren’t many openings these days.

Cheer!
Harsh Munshaw
Team CodeChef