Just 2 days ago I was accepted as a Microsoft intern for summer 2014. I'm so excited about this! I want to say thanks to CF — interview questions were almost all about algorithms (although pretty basic) and CF was a place I improved so much! As you see, not so much time ago I was light green.
As one of the reasons of my success I see this great platform — thanks MikeMirzayanov and thanks CF!
Thanks for the kind words. I really hope that Codeforces helps many people to understand Computer Science, learn algorithms and improve coding skills. My point is that programming contests (and Codeforces as the leading platform) are efficient and exciting way to get deep knowledge in algorithms and data structures.
Right now 'gamification' is a modern trend, but programming competitions communuty uses gamification for many years! Recently people found that online problems are very good in education and they work as a key part in so modern 'online courses'. But programming contests are based on online problems with completely automated judgement for tens years!