Which Country Would Win in the Programming Olympics? (opens in new tab)

(blog.hackerrank.com)

14 pointslilcarlyung9y ago11 comments

11 comments

This article claims to rank nation's Olympic programming ability, but uses the average score from online tests.

The olympics are scored by the best a nation can do, not by its average.

The conclusion I would draw is China, Russia, and Poland perform the best in programming challenges. The article even shows this in a quote about the greatness of Chinese programmers:

> In universities and colleges, education resources are relatively fewer in comparison with many other countries, so students have less choices in their paths to programming. Many great students end up obsessed with competitive programming since it's one of the few paths.

The headline is somewhat click-baity.

fangfufu9y ago

Well, Hackerrank is a recruiting company. If you are from China or Russia, and you want to leave the country and find a job elsewhere, having a high score on Hackerrank is going to improve your chances. If you are from the UK or US, you probably wouldn't bother.

sickbeard9y ago

I never heard of hackerrank until now. Maybe the site has a location bias? Interesting bit, when I used to have ad-sense for my tumblr app certain regions just visited more of that site than others

PedroBatista9y ago

That's the purpose of the whole article.

Vitaly9y ago

Or may be good programmers in US don't feel the need to prove themselves on such sites, instead they can just go and work for good company like Facebook, Apple, Google, etc.

pmontra9y ago

Are those tests representative of what we have to do at work? I did a couple of tests on another site and they were almost artificial, something you do only at university exams but never at work.

If I were an interviewer I'd use them only to see how somebody starts thinking about solutions but we can use real world problems for that.

shabda9y ago

Is the raw data for this calculation available anywhere? I am guessing the sample size for some countries in top 10 is too low to be meaningful.

roylez9y ago

The ranking is a joke. Look at taobao, the most famous website in China. Its front page is a mess. As an Chinese I can tell you those Chinese copycat software or websites are often patched up Frankensteins.

danielam9y ago

What does UI/UX have to do with HackerRank? I don't think HackerRank even measures more "pragmatic" qualities of software (e.g., code organization, clarity, etc). In any case, the "busy UI" or cluttered look that is almost universal across Chinese and east Asian websites and apps is often intentional because the chaotic UX is preferred by consumers. It reflects the experience of shopping in a Chinese market. It packs lots of assuring information into the page. It has historical and technical precedent, and breaking the trend would mean "sticking out". Sleek, simple designs may even be viewed with suspicion. Another factor is that Chinese text will generally appear more chaotic to Westerners who cannot read Chinese and are accustomed to simpler Latin characters and Western typographic conventions.

6thsurvivor9y ago

That only tells you, that they lack frontend skills/manpower. But if it's most famous, means it works. Also, that tells you just about nothing about the site backend, where the coding happens. Programming competitions are not bootstrap time trials :)

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