As the results of the IOI 2022 are now official, I would like to wholeheartedly congratulate:

• Benjamin Bajd on the first gold medal for Slovenia (after 4 tries!)
• Egor Georgievskii on the first ever medal for Montenegro (he was the only participant in his country's delegation this year)
• Nicola Abusaad on the first ever medal for Palestine
• Rolly Mamani on the first ever medal for Peru (this was also the first time when Peru participated in the IOI!)

Congratulations to all! I really hope you all just opened the bag of medals for your countries!

... will take place in Bolivia! This will be the second time that IOI will be hosted in South America, after IOI 1993 in Argentina!

Clip: https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx41oRJ7szuU-RmnOXHKk3yRDySIrEZ-nb

Join us for another round of our online coding competition and tackle fun problems designed by Google engineers!

➡️ g.co/kickstart.

Round B starts in less than 24 hours (on April 23rd, 2022, at 23:00 UTC)!

As in the previous years, I want to create a list of people participating in the next IOI. Please add participants from your country using this form: https://forms.gle/5J8P4dG8vnUwjBjh7. Feel free to also comment here with their handles for visibility.

The list is available at https://kostka.dev/ioi/22/ .

Lists from the previous years: https://kostka.dev/ioi/21/, https://kostka.dev/ioi/20/ (I know the flags are broken, but I don't want to update them, as the ratings will change as well).

If you see any mistakes, either fill the form again with the correct data or message me.

Thanks!

The Code Jam Qualification Round has officially begun! → goo.gle/cj2022

You've got until 02:00 UTC on April 3 to register AND score enough points (at least 30) to advance to Round 1.

Registration closes at the end of the round!

It's a good movie. Go watch it.

Kick Start is back for our tenth year! Join this online global coding competition offering beginner to advanced coders the space to develop programming skills and become better acquainted with competitive programming. We offer challenges at different times throughout the year so you can join in on the fun whenever it’s convenient for you – check out the round schedule.

Our first official round of the year (round A) starts on March 20th 2022, 04:00 UTC.

Before the round, be sure to:

• Take a look at our helpful tutorial video, to learn more about the competition platform and some useful tips and tricks.
• Practice out past problems and review the FAQ.
• Check out our YouTube playlist, where you’ll find problem walkthrough videos hosted by Google engineers.

Sign up today!

Hope you'll join us for Round A!

IOI has issued a statement: https://ioinformatics.org/news/ioi-response-to-invasion-of-ukraine/40

In short:

• the IC strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation
• the Russian delegation will not be invited to IOI 2022 (but they can participate online under the IOI flag)
• there is still an ongoing discussion regarding the Belarusian delegation

I am curious about what the community thinks of this decision and its repercussions.

Update, 26 April 2022: The delegation from Belarus will be subject to the same restrictions as described above for Russia.

Coding Practice with Kick Start Session 1 is underway!

Join this four-day session to:

• Get familiar with the Kick Start platform
• Work on algorithmic coding problem problems
• Improve your coding skills with help from Googlers

Register now → http://goo.gle/KickStart2022

How junior olympiads (grade 8 or less) look like in your countries? Can you share some info/your experiences/links?

In Poland, we have an annual contest with three stages (first online, second and third onsite). During the first stage, we also have a test checking language proficiency (C++ or Python) and the ability to solve algorithmic puzzles. During the final stage, top X contestants are selected to attend the preparation camp and the EJOI.

Whether you’re looking to practice your coding, prepare for an upcoming interview, connect with a global community, or have some fun — Kick Start is here to help! Round G 2021 starts in less than 24 hours on October 16 starting at 12:00 UTC. You will have 3 hours to solve what you can during the round.

Hope to see you in Round G 2021!

... for "solving the problem of making sure there's an opportunity for everyone to participate" (the program is called ACPC for girls). What about all the issues related to this regional that are still unanswered (link 1, link 2)?

Good job, ICPC, again! Now give each team the 4th computer!

Whether you’re looking to practice your coding, prepare for an upcoming interview, connect with a global community, or have some fun — Kick Start is here to help! Round F 2021 starts in less than 24 hours on September 18 starting at 17:00 UTC. You will have 3 hours to solve what you can during the round.

We are excited to announce we are now supporting PyPy3 and updated compilers and interpreters for several languages. You can find more information in the Platform section of the FAQ.

Hope to see you in Round F 2021!

Join our online coding competition and tackle fun problems designed by Google engineers! ➡️g.co/kickstart

Round E starts in less than 12 hours (on August 22nd at 03:30 UTC).

In the last contest, both tourist and ko_osaga copied the author's solution from the problem Matrix from Petrozavodsk Winter Camp 2013 Warsaw U contest: 123723552 and 123727448 respectively. You can easily verify that they didn't write this code themselves by looking at the comments in these solutions (written in Polish).

This is against the Codeforces rules. According to this post, we have the following rules:

Solutions and test generators can only use source code completely written by you, with the following two exceptions:

1. the code was written and published/distributed before the start of the round,
2. the code is generated using tools that were written and published/distributed before the start of the round.

and

Currently, the only reliable proof is the presence of code on the Internet and the presence of the used edition in the cache of well-known search engines.

For example, this rule accepts the use of the code from the website http://e-maxx.ru/ if the code was written and published/distributed before the start of the round. With the help of search engine caches, it can be easily shown that such code doesn't violate the rules. Similarly, it is permissible to use the code from a book/article that was published before the contest. On the other hand, using team reference code (for example, prepared for ACM-ICPC World Finals) is not allowed if there is no reliable and objective way to prove that the code was written before the contest.

This code is not available on the Internet publicly and was never published anywhere (at least I am not aware of that). There are two ways to get access to this code: either ask the author or have admin access to one of the contests where this problem is used. In my opinion, this falls into the second category (same as team reference code), as only a small number of people have access to this. Moreover, imagine if a similar issue would occur to some unknown, green or grey contestants. Their solutions for sure would be skipped. Please stop this elitism and ratism and treat all the contestants equally.

I am not saying that we should ban them or skip their solutions, but we should make sure that the rules are clear and fair and there are no exceptions. Maybe if you are using a third-party code, you need to add a comment mentioning the original source of the problem and this solution doesn't have to be widely available, but can be verified upon the request of someone investigating this potential cheating case? If that's the rule that we currently use, please add this to the aforementioned blog.

A long time ago I had to write a master's thesis. Of course, my thesis was about sports programming. To be precise: I described what the whole thing is about, including famous competitions and platforms, and described many techniques (with applications) that weren't really known to wider audiences (outside this community and some of them also to Um_nik apparently).

See Table of Contents, if you are interested in what exactly was included.

Now I am wondering what to do with this work. For instance, would you be interested in buying this if I ever published this as a book?

Disclaimer: The following is my personal opinion.

From the interviewee's standpoint: there already exists a huge database of problems used for interviews in different companies. If you want to prepare for interviews, please use them. No one needs this one problem you got on your interview. Also, if you haven't solved the problem during the interview, learning how to solve it from someone else won't help you. Take some time yourself, try to find similar problems. Maybe ask your friends, but do not post this problem online. You won't also learn anything just from reading solutions.

From the interviewer's standpoint: as problems are "leaked", you have to frequently change your problems, so you waste your time to prepare these new problems and it feels really bad when you cannot ask any of your fully-mastered problems (for which you know all the caveats, for instance how to hint people properly in the right direction). I even dare to say that the necessity of using a new, fresh problem has a negative impact on the interviewees, as their experience is worse compared to if you could use your old, tested problems.

So please DO NOT SHARE YOUR INTERVIEW QUESTIONS.

I wasn't aware of how few people participate in SRMs nowadays (reference).

What happened to this platform and can they try to change something to come back?

But seriously, every time I see an announcement of a new round, I grab popcorn and see what was wrong this time.

Join our online coding competition and tackle fun problems designed by Google engineers! ➡️g.co/kickstart

Round C starts in less than 24 hours (on May 23rd at 11:00 UTC).

You should already know the drill: https://forms.gle/JfkTpZYKhXqwTuat5

UPD: The list is here: https://kostka.dev/ioi/21/.

If you see any mistakes, either fill the form again with the correct data or message me.

For reference, the list from the previous year: https://kostka.dev/ioi/20/

What if all these cheating groups are run by Telegram to advertise their platform?

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

Round B starts in less than 24 hours (on April 18th at 23:00 UTC).

Join our online coding competition and tackle fun problems designed by Google engineers! ➡️g.co/kickstart

Looking for a way to stay connected, try something new, and have a little fun? The Kick Start 2021 season has begun!

Kick Start offers programmers of all skill levels the opportunity to boost your skills through a series of intriguing algorithmic and mathematical problems designed by Google engineers. Each round starts fresh, so give any one of our 2021 online rounds a try — or join them all!

Join

• Create a Coding Competitions profile and then register for Kick Start.
• Check out the full schedule and add rounds to your calendar so you'll never miss out.

Prepare

• View our tutorial video to learn more about the competition platform and some useful tips and tricks.
• Practice makes progress! Try your hand at past problems and read through our FAQ if you have a question.

Connect

Be part of the #KickStart community by joining our Facebook Group to meet other participants, chat about past problems, and hear about the latest updates!

Questions? Reach out to kickstart@google.com.

We hope you’ll join us for some fun practice. What are you waiting for?

The last round of Google Kick Start 2020 will take place this Sunday (November 15) at 3:00 UTC and will last 3 hours. Make sure you participate!

See you at g.co/kickstart.

UPD: Thank you for participating! Analysis can be found in the problem view. See you next year!