{"id":20594,"date":"2018-02-28T10:08:16","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T15:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/company\/stories\/codecon-2018-hundreds-students-8-problems-originator-c\/"},"modified":"2022-02-16T14:14:18","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T19:14:18","slug":"codecon-2018-hundreds-students-8-problems-originator-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/company\/stories\/codecon-2018-hundreds-students-8-problems-originator-c\/","title":{"rendered":"Bloomberg CodeCon: Hundreds of Students, 8 Problems, and the Originator of C++"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bloomberg\u2019s annual CodeCon Finals stands out among coding competitions. Like other such contests, it gives participants a chance to hone their coding, strategic thinking, and time management skills. But it also brings hundreds of top college coders together, giving them the chance to network, mingle, and, of course, write programs that solve a series of increasingly difficult problems (each of which is presented as a fun, interesting scenario) \u2012 all in person.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would definitely encourage other students to participate,\u201d says Despina Malai, a senior at the University of Essex who competed in this year\u2019s CodeCon. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like CodeCon. You get to go to a physical event and meet people, and see what people are like in the industry and what other graduates are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

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CodeCon 2018, held simultaneously in London and New York on Friday, January 26, 2018, included 168 college students from 54 schools across the United States, Canada, Europe and the Middle East, winnowed down from more than 2,500 students who took part in qualifying competitions. As New Yorkers were just starting to think about lunch, and as Londoners headed into the evening, the coders took their seats and listened to the ground rules: The competition would last two hours. Online research was okay; collaboration with other coders was not. There were eight problems of varying difficulty. Coders could attack them in any order they wished, but the harder problems scored more heavily. Speed mattered.<\/p>\n

Some of the participants, through earlier coding competitions, had already worked out their strategies. Xiaojia Rao, a senior at the University of Cambridge had participated in the finals before and advised would-be participants to use previous questions for practice runs. Other advice varied distinctly. University of Oxford doctoral student Karolis Kusas, another returning entrant who had come in second place before, suggested getting the easy questions done first. \u201cIt boosts your confidence, and it\u2019s very important to get confidence early.\u201d Maksim Solovjov, a financial software developer at Bloomberg, himself a question setter, disagreed. \u201cI\u2019d go for the middle ones, because it\u2019s all about the best use of your time, and they\u2019re more valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others just seemed to welcome a challenge, no matter what form the results might take. Matthew Consterdine, a senior from the University of Southampton, cheerfully said he\u2019d entered before and not done very well, loved the process, and expected not to do particularly well this go round either. Joshua Bradbury of King’s College London entered a qualifier having heard about it the day before and was equally convinced he wouldn\u2019t win.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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