Influx has followed the interest parallels between videogaming and sport and it now looks as if computer programming could follow the same route. Topcoder.com is the proving ground and center of attention for the programming elite.
On the site, there are lots of announcements of various online tournaments, but the big event, of course, takes place in Las Vegas, The Top Coder Open May 3rd-May 5th at the Aladdin Resort.
To take part in the onsite event, wannabe programming stars have to duel their way through various online tournaments that are broken down into two streams, algorithms and components.
Checking on the stats page, the top rated coder out of 4141 is misof (picture on the left) who hails from Slovakia. He has earned a total of $8,184 from competition, ok not sports level prize money yet.
These Top Coder events are attracting all kinds of government and corporate interest, the NSA is sponsoring the event in Las Vegas and other sponsors of Top Coder include UBS, Sun Microsystems, Intel, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The company has also put together private label events for the likes of Sun and Google.
