Guus Klinkenberg - From Puzzles to Proficiency: The Opportunities of Coding Competitions

For as long as we know, we have been competing. Arenas were built by the Romans to compete. Put to two kids in a room with just a stone, and they will start a completion about the silliest thing they can do with that stone. Humans are inherently competitive. However, the work we do is mostly about market outcome, and the outcome is not entirely based on skills or how good we are at using our tools. Programming competitions like Advent of Code or hackathons are a nice environment to experiment with tools and technologies while gaining new or improving skills and insights. And at the same time, you connect with colleagues or new people.

In this talk, we first dive into why these competitions can be fun, and how we can benefit from events like this. Next, we look into my experience while organizing various programming competitions. This will include some examples, takeaways and maybe a blunder or two, which will help you participate or organize a competition!

#jfall #java