Too Slow

I have been remiss in getting my posts out. A few weeks ago I was at ICSE. I had intended on making a post based on that conference, but as soon as it was over, I went into vacation mode. While on vacation I found a number of things to do that kept me away from computers. About the only computer thing I did do was compete in the 2^nd round of the Google Code Jam.

This was more challenging than normal for me because Google tries to schedule their contests to be at a somewhat reasonable hour for most of the world. They've made the decision that there is this great big ocean without a lot of people living in it, and so they schedule it so the contest is in the middle of the night for the Pacific. Of course, I happened to be in Hawai'i at this time and so got up at O'dark-thirty for the 4AM contest start. Surprisingly, I not only did well enough to get a t-shirt (top 1000), but did well enough to advance to the next round (top 500).

So this is why I missed the last two posts. What about this post? Well, after two weeks away, we had a lot of catching up to do at home and at work. The little bit of free computer time I was able to find went to practicing for the 3^rd round of the Google Code Jam where they would select the top 25. Unfortunately, that was for naught, as I did not advance.

Too Slow
24 out of 25 of the advancers solved the first 3 problems, as well as the small input set on the 4^th problem. I, also, know how to solve the first 3 problems as well as the small input set on the 4^th problem. So what's the difference between the advancers and me? On this problem set, speed. At the same time as I was submitting my solution to the second problem, 25^th place was submitting his final solution.

The top competitors were probably a little faster at coming up with algorithms and at coding the algorithms. However, what killed me was debugging. In the first problem, I had numerous bugs in my code that I had to spend time tracking down. Careless mistakes on this problem singlehandedly knocked me out of the running to advance. On the third problem, bugs were again my downfall. I didn't take my own advice and I didn't spend a couple minutes thinking about how to best structure my data structures. I just used the first thing that popped into my head which ended up being very error prone. After the contest, when I had a couple minutes to think without the pressure, I came up with a much simpler way to code the same algorithm.

So what's the moral of this story? Don't make mistakes! :) And trying to do things in a rush just makes it more likely that you will make mistakes. Oh, and going on vacation during a contest is probably not conducive to preparing.

As for why this post is a day late... well, I am just a little bit slow.