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Comment by l0nwlf | Hacker News Reader

Google is organizing similar event aka Google Code Jam ( http://code.google.com/codejam ) for years. Facebook Hacker Cup feels like a clone of it.

Similarities:

1. Annual algorithmic competitions.

2. Various online elimination rounds.

3. World finals at headquarters.

4. Prizes: 1st place = $5000 USD, 2nd place = 2000$ USD, 3rd place for $1000 USD and $100 for 4th through 25th place.

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The GCJ was google's spin off from the standard TopCoder algorithm competitions (see http://topcoder.com/tc). In fact the first two GCJs were run by TopCoder before Google decided they wanted to run it themselves. I suspect the Hacker Cup is also being run by TopCoder.

GCJ is itself similar to the much older ACM's ICPC ( http://cm.baylor.edu/welcome.icpc , around in some form since 1977 http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=The%20Early%20Ye... ), though of course it's not limited to college students.

The ICPC is fairly different in format though. For one, it's always team-based, and usually has much harder problems since the entrants are always university-level students who have taken advanced algorithms courses. I've participated in both TopCoder contests and the ICPC and the GCJ/HackerCup are definitely TopCoder-style rather than ICPC.

Based on their engineering puzzles[1], I'd maybe expect problems geared more towards approximation/heuristics. The GCJ problems always require exact answers.

[1] http://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php

So? More money (or free tshirts) for idle programmers I say :D

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