Jiazhi Wu: Programming's Crack Competitor This coding champ won 39 out of 45 TopCoder programming matches in two years. Eric Lai <http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.cpw.itmanagement/index;pos=imu;tile=7;sz=336x280,336x600;> <http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.cpw.itmanagement/index;pos=ezblaster;tile=8;sz=336x35;> * July 9, 2007* (Computerworld) <http://www.computerworld.com/> What kind of trophies do they give to programming champions? Jiazhi Wu would know. As an undergrad at Zhejiang University in China, Wu won a record 39 out of 45 programming contests held by TopCoder Inc., a Glastonbury, Conn.-based software development and recruiting firm. Winning those global contests which generate actual software that TopCoder turns around and sells to its corporate customers also won Wu a cool $155,000. Jiazhi writes code very fast. In most cases, his code doesnt need much debugging, says Chao Yang, a former classmate of Wus and a fellow competitive coder. Based on my observations, I cannot see any weaknesses in him as a programmer. Im not good at sports at all, so programming was the most competitive aspect of my life, says Wu, who counts Java, C++ and C# as his favorite languages. Champion coders tend to burn out early or move on to real jobs. Thats the case with the 26-year-old, who says he has retired from competitive programming and now focuses on his role as vice president of technology for the Chinese subsidiary of TopCoder. His mission: to serve as chief architect for software components produced in China, as well as attract more burgeoning talent from Chinas deep technical well. There are a lot of talented Chinese programmers around, but they need a platform to present themselves, he says. TopCoder provides that platform. .... http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&tax... ________________________________________ They Chinese compete well but cooperation (open cultures / characters) seems to work better in building software / web companies!