by Tom Simonite, Technology Review
If Vladimir Putin glances out the Kremlin window at just the right moment, he has a chance of glimpsing the world’s best computer programmer in Google’s Moscow office across the river. He is Petr Mitrichev, a 27-year-old Russian who works on Google’s search engine and earned his champion’s title in competitive programming, a sport where hackers write computer code in pursuit of cash prizes, travel opportunities, and a deep fulfillment unattainable anywhere else. Since 2005, Mitrichev, a graduate of Moscow State University, has led the globe in algorithmic programming. That’s the Grand Prix of coding categories, in which riddles involving infinite game boards or the decibel level of n + 1 mooing cows require instant mathematical insights and quick fingers on the keyboard. Mitrichev is known for his “short pause”—that is, he starts to answer questions nearly as soon as he sees them.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428610/in-the-olympics-of-algorithms-a-russian-keeps/
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