Google code jam

[shubla]

Did you take part in it? did you like the problems?

I think that the problems were quite interesting, especially the last one.

But they totally messed up with the site! It was laggy and just did not work at all at first. But it seems that they got it fixed now.

[Makzul78]

What are you talking about? Have I missed something lately?

[MagicManICT]

Probably. But probably not. There's a lot of this stuff anymore if you're a programmer looking to test your skills on strange and fascinating problems that can be completed in a weekend.

[shubla]

There's a lot of this stuff anymore if you're a programmer looking to test your skills on strange and fascinating problems that can be completed in a weekend.

what

[MagicManICT]

It's not all as obvious, and some are harder to find. Google wasn't the one to start the code jam. These things have been held since at least the 80s. Jams started out as a part of hacker culture. As long as I've been following DefCon, a code jam has been a part of it (except this is more to compete on who can hack whatever the fastest or crack some new tech), and I knew of stuff going on around the major tech companies and universities when I was in High School--San Jose, Dallas, LA, Chicago, and others.

Code competitions started early on, at least by the late 80s, too, with a bunch of college kids looking to figure out who was the best, the fastest, whatever. By the 90s, they had been formalized, as in regular competitions with rules, and major college scholarships were attached to some, jobs to others.

I'm sure someone has done some good historical writing on this stuff, the origins, and all that. All you have to do is google "code competition" or "code jam" and there's events going on frequently, online or in person, and several websites dedicated to it.

[Trappin]

The wording changes, but the meaning remains the same. Tech talk. Jargon. Modern techies would find coomon cause with edgy 19th century telegraph operators. Union splice a copper telegraph wire and you've got a man in the middle attack. Sometimes it seems there really is nothing new under the sun.

Phone phreaking and Cap'n Crunch. That stuff might as well be ancient Greek history to those born less than twenty years ago. Mechanical switching network hacks versus digital switching. The old stuff looks like a steampunk wetdream. Just add shiny brass knobs and levers. The 1943 enigma machine at Bletchley Park with alan Turing and WRENS hovering about it like meaty automatons in the film The Imitation Game. That machine was a hack of the Polish bomba which was a hack of the German hack of a commercial encryption machine circa 1920. Then forward to the film THX-1138. The last of the mechanical switching banks - those rows of banks are for real. 1968. The old Pacific Bell switching farm in San Fracisco.

Oh, right, and hacking telegraph lines during The War Between the States. Man in the middle attack circa 1861. Even older though fictional. Semaphore towers outside Paris! (book; Pavane)