Communications of the ACM
Which Country Has the World's Best Coders? There's an Axe For That
The Polish team of brothers Tomasz and Piotr Zurkowski and Wojciech Jaskowski surpassed teams from Brazil, Slovakia, Finland, and Russia to be crowned the first coding world champions.
Credit: Tuomas Sauliala
A team of three Polish programmers called "The Need for C" won the Hello World Open 2014, a worldwide programming competition that aims to change the public perception of coding and promote its practice.
"The perception of [coding] within the general public is still outdated," says event organizer Ville Valtonen. "We want to update the image of a stereotypical coder and inspire young people to start coding."
The competition started with qualifying rounds of more than 4,000 programmers from 92 countries. The teams had to create a virtual race car with artificial intelligence so it could race autonomously against opponents and varying track conditions.
In addition to the Polish team, seven other teams qualified for the final round.
"We want to make coders the role models that are worth looking up to," Valtonen says.
Ilkka Paananen, CEO of game developer Supercell, one of the event's main organizers along with digital services firm Reaktor, also sees the need to promote coding in order to boost its overall appreciation. "All innovative digital services of the future will be built on top of great code," Paananen says. "We need to start celebrating the superstars of this craft more widely, as these skills are so fundamental to our society going forward."
From ZDNet
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