Petr is no longer ranked #1 on popular competitive programming sites such as Topcoder [1] and Codesforce [2]. 18-year-old Gennady Korotkevich [3] from Belarus ranks better on both, and has also won the most medals in the International Olympiad in Informatics ever, he was awarded his first silver medal when he was 11.<p>Nonetheless, Petr is a legend in this field.<p>[1]: <a href="http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank" rel="nofollow">http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://codeforces.com/ratings" rel="nofollow">http://codeforces.com/ratings</a><p>[3]: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Korotkevich" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Korotkevich</a>
Seems somewhat nonsensical to claim the man is the "best computer programmer in the world", (ignoring for a moment the notion that there is such a thing) since only a small percentage of computer programmers in the world even participate in these events and that the "best computer programmer in the world" couldn't care less about such competitions.
I'm Russian and feeling liiiitle bit proud right about now. :) I'm his age and we're the last generation of soviet-era school graduates. Russian educational system is in one enormously epic crapper right now and people like this guy are going to be a real rarity in Russia.
there's high density of post-Soviet block people in TopCoder ranking - out of TOP10 7 are from Russia, Belarus and Poland. Other 3 - China, Japan, South Africa <a href="http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank" rel="nofollow">http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank</a>
Here's some more background around Petr
<a href="http://www.quora.com/Petr-Mitrichev/What-it-is-like-to-meet-or-know-Petr-Mitrichev" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Petr-Mitrichev/What-it-is-like-to-meet-...</a><p>And some discussion around Russia and China dominating in coding contests
<a href="http://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-from-Eastern-Europe-and-China-now-dominate-coding-competitions" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-from-Eastern-Europe-and-C...</a>
It seems a great pity that Google puts so much talent to work on improving the search engine algorithms ´to deliver the most relevant result first´ and then ruins it all by putting some cheap schmuck´s site at the top, no matter how irrelevant, just because he paid them a few bucks.