Will competitive programming ever become a real sport?

Revision en1, by TeaPot, 2017-08-14 20:48:31

I always was dreaming that one day competitive programming will become a real sport, not just activity for a small group of participants. Why? Because I don't really like working and my tries to do some science were totally unsuccessful. It would be cool to live just by doing what you like. Very childish, I know.

But this blog is not about if competitive programming is important or are there any ways to make it interesting to watch to wider audience. I am just trying to understand, is it currently moving toward real sport or away from it? And I get some mixed signals about that:

Bad signals:

  • Big onsites (like GCJ or TCO) seem to cut the number of participants and the amount of prizes.

  • Some onsite-finals are turning to online-finals. For example, several years ago we had Russian Code Cup onsite in Russia, currently RCC Finals is online.

  • Some big companies are turning away from sport programming (IBM is stopping sponsorship of ACM ICPC).

Good signals:

  • Some new finals were created during last years. For example, VK Cup in Russia, SnackDown in India or Code Festival in Japan (for students).

  • Some small firms are holding rounds and even created their own little onsite finals.

  • Sports programming (not in the financial part) seems to thrive. For instance, there are new platforms for training that were created just in the last year: like atcoder (for international participants) or csacademy.

So, what future will you predict for a competitive programming? Will it become a real sport? Or will it forever be just for fun and for students to get to the interview in a big company?

Tags competitive programming, money

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en1 English TeaPot 2017-08-14 20:48:31 1687 Initial revision (published)