Top coders ahoy: Google took some time today to announce Code Jam Europe, the continental version of its hugely successful programming competition.
Competitors fight it out to be faster than their rivals at solving a number of problems, proving their coding muscle and - if they emerge on top of the pile - scooping a €2500 prize. The top 50 will also have the chance to be interviewed by Google for jobs.
I spoke to Shannon Maher, the company's engineering director in London, who explained exactly what Googleplex hoped to achieve.
"We're expanding our engineering group greatly in Europe," he told me. "We can't be in everybody's back yard, but we can be closer to people. We obviously expect that any of these top coders are the people we'd want to be associated with."
So effectively this is Google saying to the programming community "hey, we're in Europe" and then taking part in an outreach programme.
The science bit - Code Jam Europe follows a similar trajectory to previous events in the US and more recently in India: several rounds of competition which narrow the competitors down. The first is online, and starts now. Then there are several attempts to whittle down the numbers (the Indian competition drew 14,000 wannabes) until the grand final between 50 battle-hardened code monkeys on June 29 in Dublin.
