Yes, in order to participate in Distributed Code Jam you must participate in Code Jam and advance to Code Jam Round 2. You can participate and win in both tracks. The rounds will not overlap.
In 2017, we will support C++ and Java. Stay tuned for more information.
Your friends made a brave attempt to beat the world record for making the longest sub sandwich ever. They failed or succeeded (it doesn't really matter), and proposed to you to eat as much of the sandwich as you want to.
The sandwich is composed of N parts. Each part has a taste value for you, which might be positive (meaning you want to eat it) or negative (meaning you would prefer not to). Ideally, you would just eat the tasty parts, but it's rude to break out the middle of the sandwich. So, instead you want to eat some part from the beginning, and some part from the end; and to make the total taste of what you eat as large as possible (Note: it's OK to eat the whole sandwich, or to eat nothing at all). Return the largest total taste of what you can eat.
Your solution will run on 100 machines. Each machine will get 256MB of RAM and 2 seconds of running time. Your program can use the library methods GetN(), which will return the value of N, and GetTaste(i), which will return the taste value of the i-th piece of the sandwich (for 0 ≤ i < N).
We want to ensure we're challenging competitors and providing an opportunity for programmers of all types to participate in Code Jam. We also saw this as an opportunity as there are currently no similar competitions in today's competitive coding landscape. Finally, we believe that distributed programming skills are an important part of a modern programmer's skillset and want to provide a platform for programmers to improve and refine those skills.
We have a cluster of virtual machines set up on Google Compute Engine on standby, waiting for your solutions. When you submit, the appropriate number of them get allocated as your nodes. We compile your solution and copy it onto the nodes, and once all the nodes are ready, we launch your nodes simultaneously (as much as it is possible to do anything simultaneously in a distributed environment).
The guide for the Distributed Code Jam should answer your questions. See the resources below if there is something you need help with.
There are a few tools you can use:
Stay tuned for more practice information in 2017.
If you did not find your question in the list above, please consult the general FAQ from Google Code Jam. For any other queries you can join our Google Group discussion forum or contact us by email.
