CodeChef SnackDown 2016: Finally get its ultimate winner

CodeChef, a non-profit educational initiative which has been always arranging SnackDown finally founds its winner on 9th July witnessed top 50 teams from high schools, colleges, and corporate organizations from all across the globe, participate in a five-hour long onsite programming battle at CodeChef’s headquarters in Directiplex, Mumbai, India.  Borys Minaiev and Gennady Korotkevich of ITMO University, Saint Petersburg, Russia claimed the title of “SnackDown 2016 Champions” and a hefty cash award of $10,000.

So What’s CodeChef SnackDown

CodeChef is a non-profit education initiative of Directi. This company has successfully completed the 3rd time its SnackDown Coding competition at the International Level. The company being Indian, Even in Top 50 team really quiet less  team were Indian. Almost 90 percent of the team were International present for the CodeChef SnackDown. The CodeChef Started in 2009 with a goal to improve and expand the Indian programming community. This goal was shaped by the following turn of events. Directi made its first visit to a campus for hiring freshers in the year 2009. It was a phase in Directi when we as an organization wanted to make a transition.

About CodeChef from International Players

We got the chance to interact with different participants of the Top 50. Thanks to the CodeChef team actually for letting us do. The first thing the program was happening at International Event for just the third time. So I asked how did they come to know that there’s is something called SnackDown organized by CodeChef.  The response was like from the other roommates or mainly from the college seniors. They told participating CodeChef helps them to understand and learn new algorithms which enhance their skills and mainly they could make it definitely in Big companies through it. The CodeChef mainly depended on how good you are at programming and only the best wins. Also, more importantly, they came to know people from different countries and different culture. There are other programs like the SnackDown which is organized by Microsoft and Google each but the CodeChef is the only program where teamwork is merely important. You ain’t gonna win it all the path through alone.

About CodeChef from Indian Player

So to be frank, even I’m gonna graduate soon from Mumbai University under the course of Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology. I also do lots of coding and one of the students known for coding. When I Visited I too felt low for my side because After interacting with International Player I came to know where I exactly stand. I came to know I didn’t learn much yet. When I interacted one of the Indian team(IIT Kharagpur Students), That time I came to know that. It’s truly isn’t my fault either, our education system has never thought us problem programming at the early level. They being in top 50 one of the most challenging part for them was the experience level. They also had experience of 2 or maybe max 4 years and they are competing for international players who have the experience of 8 to 10 years. So that is a huge gap and for Indian its hard to compete at SnackDown. Even the IIT student said all the things which they learned to pass the preliminary was totally from the Internet not from their own syllabus.

CodeChef Directors Take

We saw a huge gap which is the big problem for the Indian to make it to the Win. So Even the CodeChef Team which is totally based in Mumbai. They said the key pillar to crack the contest is to be Good at mathematics and to Strong at Data Structure as well. Also, the Indian Syllabus is never taught of programming level problems as compared to International Players. So to take on this take they handle different workshop in various schools and colleges. It’s totally a small start they have to take on to solve the Indian’s Gap to be fulfilled with a good bridge. Even they are at an early stage so expecting a very big change will take time. Also participating in the SnackDown at international level helps the Indian at small scale to Interact and learn much more from the International Player. They shared much more like even if they take 25 Indian Team and 25 International Team, Still only 4 Indian teams make out to top other than International Players are always much ahead. It’s not Indian’s aren’t capable but they are taught and guided well at the early stage of the age.

 

The other highlight of the finals was the one-member team of 16-year-old Arash Mahmoudian Bidgoli hailing from Atomic Energy High School, Iran. This high school student battling against the big guns from the programming world solved seven out of the 12 problems and stood fifth. Arash also went on to emerge as the Best School Team, winning a cash award of $500. Among Indian schools, Rajat De and Sidhant Bansal of Delhi Public School, Dwarka led the table also being the third best Indian team in the competition.

 

Statistics for CodeChef:

 

• CodeChef has over 4.6 lakhs registered users spread across the
  Of this, 2.5 lakh are active users.
• Students from more than 8,500 educational institutions and 200+ countries use our platform.
• We have built a problem database of 5800+ problems based on ACM ICPC and IOI.
• Problems available in 4 different languages – English, Russian, Vietnamese and Chinese.
• We have also successfully hosted the onsite regional contests of each of the Asia regional sites in India in 2015 and the largest online ICPC regional contest in the form of ACM ICPC Asia Amritapuri Site 2014 and 2015.
• 1500+ contests been hosted on CodeChef in the last 7 years. The organizers of the contests include various reputed universities, schools and organizations across the globe.
• Over 10 million code submissions have been made on CodeChef till date
• Over 77% of the users are from India and Delhi tops the city list within the country. Followed by USA, Bangladesh and UK dominates the countries list.

 

 

SnackDown 2015 Statistics

 

• of college participants: 9703
• of school students who took part in the contest: 275
• of corporate professionals: 1043
• Total no. of individuals who took part in the contest: 11.2K. Two other major competitions in this space Google CodeJam (participation: ~27K) & Facebook HackerCup (participation: ~9K).
• Total teams registered: 8486
• Have teams from across 1602 Institutes
• Have teams covering 131 Countries across the globe
• Foreign team insights: Bangladesh leading the list followed by USA, Vietnam, Russia and China.

Verdict

I seriously think it’s a wonderful initiative that the CodeChef is overall taking to make a programming at a better community as well as The big companies as well will hire only the best intelligent and much better employees for their company. They will be much better in programming than others. Also at the same time, it will definitely make the Indian Students as well profit from learning and understanding the code at the very good stage. Also, I hope in a upcomming year the CodeChef will fill the bridge and it will be a fair and tough fight between Indians and International Players as well we hope someday an Indian Team will win too.