More on the TopCoder Competitions

Print-friendly Version

By Steve Meloan
April 2003

Shining Star for You to See

The TopCoder site offers opportunity and community. The site's competitions attract the best and the brightest of the developer community via fun, challenging, and lucrative time-based competitions. And these competitions provide learning opportunities (for both competitors and spectators), while they expose rising stars in the software field to interested corporate parties.

Let the Games Begin

TopCoder competitions come in two basic forms: single-round matches and major tournaments. Within the realm of tournaments, there is currently the Collegiate Challenge, held in the spring, and the Invitational, held in the fall. Collegiate Challenges are open to any full-time student over 18 who is attending an accredited college or university. Meanwhile, the Invitationals are open to anyone, student or professional, over 18.

Tournaments are comprised of regional quarterfinals, regional finals, regional championships, semi-finals, and championship competitions. The five regions are: northeast, southeast, west, midwest, and international. The regional competitions occur online, but both the semi-final and final competitions are conducted onsite.

To be in the running for either type of tournament, you must first participate in at least two single-round matches on the TopCoder site, one of them within six months of the tournament. Single-round matches and the pre-final rounds of the various tournaments all take place entirely online. Single-round matches are held once a week, and typically occur during the evening hours, to accommodate the greatest number of participants. To enter a given match, the entrant must register during a 90-minute window prior to that match.

Drilling Down

Each single-round match or major tournament round is made up of three distinct phases: coding, challenge, and system test. During the coding phase, contestants use the TopCoder arena applet as a user interface into the back-end servers that administers the tests. Competitors spend an average of 2.5 hours online -- before, during, and after a given match.

Timeline for a TopCoder Match

Up until the on-site semi-final and final competitions for the TopCoder tournaments, all competitions occur online, using TopCoder's cutting-edge arena applet. Contestants are grouped into virtual rooms (for ease of administration and scoring), with ten contestants per room.

During the coding phase, contestants are typically offered three problems, of increasing difficulty and point value. As such, there is considerable strategy in selecting which problem to tackle first. A contestant's score is calculated based upon how accurately and quickly they code solutions to the given problems, and the selected problem's score value. The same problem can be submitted more than once, assuming an error is found in a submission, but each re-submission incurs a 10% penalty on the problem's potential point total. Meanwhile, to make things even more interesting and competitive, during the challenge phase of a given competition,, contestants (within a given room) can review one another's code, and attempt to provide a test case that will "break" it. Successful challenges earn the challenger 50 points -- and the loss of the entire problem's points for the challengee. But an unsuccessful challenge brings with it a 50-point penalty. Lastly, during the automated system test phase, submitted code is subjected to a battery of test cases that must execute within a set time limit, and must produce an expected output. The process occurs entirely without judges.

Ultimately, each competitor is assigned a numerical rating on the TopCoder site, based upon their point value in competitions, the number of competitions they have entered, and how they stack up against other coders with similar points and matches. TopCoder members provide a name "handle" of their choosing while on the site, and their handle's color denotes a rating range among other TopCoder members. An individual's rating ultimately determines their eligibility for one of TopCoder's two yearly tournaments.

Lay of the Land

Since much of the TopCoder competition time occurs online, it is fitting that the site, and the competitions, make use of extensive virtual spaces. Practice rooms provide over 300 problems from past competitions, as well as their solutions. Using the online arena applet, developers can simulate actual single-round matches -- sharpening their development skills, as well as preparing for upcoming competitions. Meanwhile, using the TopCoder site's round tables, coders can read and post to discussion boards on such relevant topics as "contest participation," "evolving strategy," "contest discussion," and "bugs and annoyances." Finally, the lobby area of the site offers a chat room that can be used before, during, and after competitions. Here, developers discuss problems and strategies amongst themselves, and also discuss procedural issues with TopCoder contest administrators.

Screen Snapshots of the TopCoder Arena Applet

Java, J2EE, J2SE, J2ME, and all Java-based marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.