It's a coders' world - we just live in it

Posted by Jeff Huber, VP Engineering

Last year we thought we hit it big when 7,500 software coders from all over competed for top prizes in our annual Google Code Jam. We didn't know what "big" was until this year's competition, which concluded today. Not 7,500, not 10,000, but 14,500 programmers hailing from Belarus and China, Venezuela and Sweden, Macedonia and Spain - among plenty of other places, 32 countries in all - limbered up and got coding in the multi-round programming competition.

The field narrowed over successive rounds since August 22, and today we hosted 100 finalists in a final showdown at the Googleplex for more than $150,000 in prizes.

Now that the dust has cleared, our second and third place winners, each of whom receives $5000, are Erik-Jan Krijgsman of the Netherlands, and Petr Mitrichev from Russia. And the grand prize of $10,000 goes to Marek Cygan from Poland, who is a student at Warsaw University.

We were amazed by the talent and energy we've seen here. Congrats to Marek, Erik-Jan, Petr and all the Google Code Jam participants. We're already looking forward to next time.