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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

This is shocking.

I'm competing in Code Jam, and it's nice to think that everyone is interested in playing fair. If you're not capable of solving the problems at this stage, you won't be capable of solving them at the later stages either, so in that respect I don't really see the point in cheating.

All it really means is that a few of the borderline-qualifying competitors missed out.

EDIT: Might be interesting to download everybody's round 1B solutions and look for similarity. I'm going to attempt to do this now.

EDIT2: Boy, Google sure don't make it easy to download everybody's solutions...

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This behaviour was common in the last Facebook Hacker Cup too. Most of the announcements of rounds starting included discussion of (and in some cases links to) solutions.

I guess it's part and parcel - I think Facebook did take action against obvious plagiarisers. If not, the later rounds will weed out the cheaters in any case.

I think you are missing the point here , instead of 3 cheaters three honest coders could have qualified to the next round , which would in turn give them the chance for competing in round 2 and round 3.

If someone barely missed passing through 1st round, chance for him to make it through any of the following rounds is practically non-existant. Exception being if he's experienced competitor who fell short for some reason.

So what you are saying is that since they may not have had a chance to win it's okay that someone cheating got ahead of them?

I understand zplesivcak's point. While it is lame that cheating is going on, it doesn't really impact the overall winner of the contest.

Also, for the last 3 spots out of 1000, there is a lot of luck involved anyway.

you assume a lot there with "last" 3 spots.

Well, it will only be the last 3 spots that are (substantially) affected by 3 cheaters - everybody else either qualified or failed to qualify anyway.

And the luck I'm referring to is in timing. If you look at the scoreboard for round 1B, 1000th place scored 34 points and a time of 1:30:38. 1001st place 34 points and a time of 1:30:48.

That 10 seconds is nothing if not luck.

Imagine this scenario ,It is round 1C . A talented programmer started competing there are only 20 minutes to go. He solves the Small and Large test cases for Problem A ,and only the small for problem C. But Alas ! his rank is 1002 , he doesn't qualify even though on topcoder he is in the top 200's.

He took a huge risk by starting with only 20 minutes to go. I would say his failure there lies more with himself than with the 3 cheaters.

Maybe that guy had a big exam or a build going on that day. I am just saying :).

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