Google Code Jam 2011 Language Popularity

I think its surprising to see such little growth in number of users using python from last year. <a href="http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/languages" rel="nofollow">http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/languages</a> vs <a href="http://www.go-hero.net/jam/10/languages/0" rel="nofollow">http://www.go-hero.net/jam/10/languages/0</a><p>I answered all the questions using python and was surprised to see the majority of the top coders (you know, the guys who solved everything in ~30 minutes) use C++ and Java. I had the impression that the difference in python's runtime would be made up for how much more succinctly you can code in it and by all the syntactic sugar... but I guess not. In fact, I noticed some of the top guys have various built in libraries to help them reduce their time spent on input handling and various solver interfaces. The auto generated code from those libraries dwarves the actual solution code in size.

Look at this guy: <a href="http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/name/Soultaker" rel="nofollow">http://www.go-hero.net/jam/11/name/Soultaker</a><p>Used Haskell, PostScript, Python, Prolog, Perl, J, Brainfuck, C, each once for one problem.

Basically, the 2 most hated languages on HN are the 2 most popular for the Google Code Jam?

Perfect score with brainfuck, that's pretty funny.

The country distributions are interesting: Python was used much more frequently in the US, while India favors Java and China favors C++.

I think its important to note that many coding competitions historically only allow C/C++/Java. There is advantage in that you can use many hacks in these languages to get around certain issues quickly if your an innovative person (which you have to be to do the contest questions).

When I started, I was thinking about using JS both "for the lulz" and because I'm comfortable enough with it that it wouldn't be a hindrance, like LOLCODE or Befunge.<p>I went with python instead because I assumed I'd need to squeeze as much efficiency as possible out of my programs.<p>For this round, these fears were completely unwarranted. All of the problems, except the second, were trivially O(n). (#2 wasn't worth optimizing, but it was possible)<p>Does anyone have experience with the next round? Is speed still not really an issue?

I was curious as to what proportion of each language achieved a perfect score. A quick script [1] sorted by Percent which reached perfect score and then by qualified resulted in the below - mean of advanced/lang is: ~90%, most (26) langs either achieved 100% entry or around 80% (14) ).<p><pre><code> [|("PostScript", (1, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("Brainfuck", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("Golfscript", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("COBOL", (1, [|1.0; 1.0; 1.0|])); ("Octave", (3, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.6666666667|])); ("Shell", (5, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.6|])); ("dc", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|])); ("sed", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|])); ("R", (2, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.5|])); ("OCaml", (21, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.380952381|])); ("F#", (17, [|1.0; 0.8235294118; 0.3529411765|])); ("D", (6, [|1.0; 0.5; 0.3333333333|])); ("Prolog", (3, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.3333333333|])); ("J", (3, [|1.0; 0.6666666667; 0.3333333333|])); ("Clojure", (17, [|1.0; 0.9411764706; 0.2941176471|])); ("Haskell", (118, [|1.0; 0.906779661; 0.2457627119|])); ("C++", (5700, [|1.0; 0.9080701754; 0.2022807018|])); ("ActionScript", (5, [|1.0; 0.8; 0.2|])); ("Lua", (12, [|1.0; 0.75; 0.1666666667|])); ("Pascal", (111, [|1.0; 0.8738738739; 0.1621621622|])); ("Python", (1658, [|1.0; 0.8805790109; 0.1447527141|])); ("Ruby", (259, [|1.0; 0.8918918919; 0.1351351351|])); ("Lisp", (26, [|1.0; 0.8076923077; 0.1153846154|])); ("C", (671, [|1.0; 0.8032786885; 0.1117734724|])); ("Java", (2652, [|1.0; 0.8465309201; 0.1052036199|])); ("C#", (710, [|1.0; 0.8309859155; 0.0985915493|])); ("Perl", (155, [|1.0; 0.8258064516; 0.09677419355|])); ("MATLAB", (11, [|1.0; 0.8181818182; 0.09090909091|])); ("Scala", (35, [|1.0; 0.8; 0.08571428571|])); ("Groovy", (13, [|1.0; 1.0; 0.07692307692|])); ("Javascript", (30, [|1.0; 0.6666666667; 0.06666666667|])); ("GO", (16, [|1.0; 0.8125; 0.0625|])); ("PHP", (166, [|1.0; 0.765060241; 0.05421686747|])); ("Visual Basic", (32, [|1.0; 0.78125; 0.03125|])); ("Assembly", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("AWK", (3, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("WRAPL", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Standard ML", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Objective-C", (6, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("TCL", (3, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Mercury", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Befunge", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Fortran", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Factor", (2, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("CMake", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("LOLCODE", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("LOGO", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Boo", (1, [|1.0; 1.0|])); ("Erlang", (5, [|1.0; 0.8|])); ("Scheme", (7, [|1.0; 0.5714285714|]))|] </code></pre> [1]<p><pre><code> str |&#62; Array.map (fun s -&#62; let spl = s.Split('\t') (spl.[0] , let scspl = spl.[spl.Length - 1].Split('/') in scspl.[0], scspl |&#62; Array.map (fun sc -&#62; float sc / float scspl.[0] ))) |&#62; Array.sortBy(fun (_,(_,sc)) -&#62; if sc.Length = 3 then -sc.[2] else 1./sc.[1])</code></pre>

I tried to use Haskell, and I think that choice bit me (not Haskell's fault, I hasten to add). I saw the correct solutions right away, but I was nowhere near good enough at recognizing the causes of type errors and I/O in general to produce them in the amount of time I had (I started late). C'est la vie. Learning experience.

I just looked at the top scoring solution, written in C++, and a Java solution next to mine in the scoreboard, and I can only say that I am really happy with my choice of Ruby.<p>As for the top scorer, I can't help but wonder if that skill even translates well to the real world?

So did Google choose C++/Java/Python as their standard languages or are they just the natural standard languages of the industry? Was there any push by Google to those 3 languages aside from developers knowing that is what they use internally?

Here is my (succinct) solution for the Q1: <a href="https://gist.github.com/960549" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/960549</a>

I enjoy seeing a positive number in the column for number of contest entries written in brainfuck.

Seems to indicate Haskell is 7 times as popular as Clojure.

Why was C++ so popular?

Wow - five coders use bash as their favorite language (including me :) ).