Google launches European coding competition

Google is reaching out to the European software development community with its first Code Jam programming competition in Europe.

Starting on 1 May, European programmers can register at the Code Jam website, to be tested later on a programming language of their choice.

Competition begins on 23 May when contestants will be given a series of questions to answer in a given amount of time. Submissions will be judged by TopCoder and the best entries will move on to the next level.

By 29 June, after three rounds of competition, the remaining 50 contestants will be flown to Dublin to compete for €30,000 in cash and prizes.

Google has sponsored the Code Jam competition for several years in the US, twice in India and once in China but this is the first one in Europe. Google opened an engineering centre in London last November and also has centres in Dublin, Trondheim and Zurich.

Shannon Maher, UK engineering site director at Google, said the competition is part of the company's outreach to the European engineering community. "We tend to emphasise we're doing difficult things here but we like to have fun doing it," he said.

Google Code Jam also serves as a recruiting tool, said Maher, as the top 50 contestants will be welcome to interview for a position with Google if they so desire.

According to preliminary results from silicon.com's 2006 Skills Survey, programming skills are the technical skills in shortest supply in the UK workforce.

Maher, however, said he's had no trouble attracting qualified and talented engineers in London, especially when it comes to working on mobile technologies. "London has a wonderful talent pool," he said.

He stressed that attracting top engineers is essential to Google. "The quality of engineers is what determines the quality of product you deliver and the ability to solve hard problems. We're all about engineering, intelligence and problem solving," he said.

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