Russian Code Cup: how it was, how it will be

In 2013, Mail.Ru Group organizes the next, third in a row, international competition for the strongest programmers - the Russian Code Cup 2013 . We conceived the Olympiad as a way to popularize programming, raise the prestige of the profession (and, of course, as an excellent reason to measure our speed of thought on the intellectual race track).

Why do you need it? Russian programmers have always been known as one of the most powerful in the world. And, of course, I want this status to remain with them further.
As for the motivation - in addition to the competitive drive, the opportunity to try their hand and other bonuses, there is a material side. Participants in the final receive valuable prizes, and the winners of the top 3 are entitled to a cash reward of 10, 5, and 3 thousand dollars, respectively. And all those who have passed the qualification receive T-shirts with the symbols of the Russian Code Cup - over the past years they have already become a kind of trophy of "experienced".

Every year we try to bring something new into the Russian Code Cup. In 2013, the basis relating directly to the competition will be preserved, and the format of the event will become even more interesting and intense.

Briefly recall how the Russian Code Cup

The competition consists of three qualifying rounds, one qualifying and one final. Qualification and qualifying rounds are held online, and anyone can take part in them. To participate in the final you need:

• Be at least 18 years old
• not to be an employee or a close relative of the Mail.Ru Group employee

Schematically, the structure of the RCC is as follows:

Register for participation in the Russian Code Cup can be on the site . The first qualifying round will be held on April 13, so if you want to have time to take part in it, you should hurry.
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All participants can try their hand at each of the qualifying rounds. Did not work out in the qualifying round? Do not despair - try again in the next qualifying round.

Tasks and the technical part for the Russian Code Cup are provided by Mail.Ru Group specialists and experts from the National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (NRU ITMO) headed by Andrey Stankevich. A. Stankevich - Associate Professor of ITMO Computer Technologies Department, winner of the Award of the President of the Russian Federation in the field of education, winner of the ACM-ICPC Founder's Award, winner of a special award of IBM Corporation, awarded for success in coaching.

How are online tours arranged?

Participants are registered on the site Russian Code Cup. After receiving the task, each participant can send a decision through the form on the website. Next, the solution is checked automatically through the verification system.

The PCMS2 testing system was written more than 10 years ago for the semifinals of the World Programming Championship. In addition to the Russian Code Cup, this system is also used for such competitions as NEERC (the semi-final of the World Programming Championship), the All-Russian Olympiad in Informatics and the All-Russian Team Olympiad in Programming. The system is written in Java and has a distributed architecture.

The PCMS2 device and the interaction scheme with the Russian Code server look like this:



Participants directly interact with the russiancodecup.ru web server located on our servers. The Mail.Ru Group infrastructure, which supports multi-million services, easily copes with several thousand participants and viewers. Sent for verification solutions are sent to the server PCMS2, which is located at NRU ITMO.

It is on the PCMS2 server that all decisions of the participants are stored, the verification is managed and the results are summarized. Olympics jury can monitor the competition with the help of a convenient application. In the screenshot you can see how the jury is studying the last successful decision of Vladislav Epifanov, thanks to which he won the qualifying round in 2012.



Verification of solutions is carried out on pre-prepared tests. Tests are the same for all participants. Of course, it can be assumed that even if the solution passes all tests, it does not guarantee its correctness. However, the jury selects such a set of tests that allows you to test with sufficient accuracy.

To test solutions on tests, the system has to run the programs of the participants. Running someone else's code is a potentially dangerous action. To do this, PCMS2 uses separate machines - invoker. They are also used to parallelize the verification process. At the inboxers, serious measures were taken to ensure the security of launching solutions, the programs launched were limited in rights, and PCMS2 monitors time and memory restrictions.

Thus, verification of a solution consists of the following main steps:

• the participant sends the solution using the web interface on the site russiancodecup.ru
• the solution is sent to the PCMS2 server
• if the solution is written in a compiled language, then it is compiled
• the solution is run on the inboxer on tests prepared by the jury
• The result of the solution check is written to the database.
• updated current competition results

Each year brings experience that is used for the next event. This allows each new RCC to be not only more effective in terms of task verification, but also more interesting for participants and guests.

In 2012, more than 3,000 people took part in the Russian Code Cup. 51 participants reached the final, 22 of them are students. Distribution by country: 35 people - Russia, 9 - Ukraine, 4 - Belarus, 2 - United States, 1 - Switzerland. The Russian Code Cup can be called the world championship among Russian-speaking programmers - 35% of the participants do not live in Russia. And out of the top 10 programmers in the TopCoder ranking, all ten are participants of the Russian Code Cup 2012.

A report on how the Russian Code Cup passed in 2012 can be found here .
In 2013, we expect an even greater number of participants, a spectacular finale and interesting victories, so if you are fond of sports programming or just want to try your hand, join RCC 2013.

Ask your questions about the organization and the conditions of the championship in the comments, I will answer.