Jiazhi Wu: Programming's Crack Competitor
This coding champ won 39 out of 45 TopCoder programming matches in two years.
Eric Lai
July 9, 2007
(Computerworld)
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. ....
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They Chinese compete well but cooperation (open cultures / characters) seems to work better in building software / web companies!