Google Code Jam 2012 Now Accepting Challengers

    Last year’s winner helped cure Goro’s anger

By Zach Walton

Code Jams are kind of like the Olympics for developers and programmers. It’s a grueling days long competition to see who can solve the most challenging algorithms that the organizer of the event can throw at them. If that sounds like your kind of thing, Google wants to you to compete in their event.

Google announced yesterday on their blog that Code Jam 2012 registration is now open. Google’s Code Jam has been going on since 2003 with this year’s contest looking to be the biggest.

Makoto Soejima took home the first place prize last year. He had to get through various challenges and hardships such as building a house for kittens and helping Goro of Mortal Kombat fame through anger management. You may be wondering what any of these have to do with coding? Just check out the problem from the aforementioned Goro scenario and watch as your brain shuts down over what it just processed.

Participants for the Code Jam will come from all over the world to prove their merit against the sure to be daunting challenges. Thankfully, participants can use whatever programming language they’re most familiar with to tackle the algorithms.

The qualification rounds will take place on April 13, so you just have a little under a month to get ready. Those who pass this round will compete in three more online rounds over the next few months. The top 25 contestants will be flown to New York City on July 25 to compete in the final round that will net the winner $10,000.

While I’m in no way confident in my ability to solve these problems, let alone basic algorithms, you can register to compete in the Code Jam now. If you’re a little rusty, the Google blog post provides competitors with the four final problems from last year.

About Zach Walton
Zach Walton is a Writer for WebProNews. He specializes in gaming and technology. Google+