Ranked 10000 in Code Jam 2021 Qualification, Perl + Scala + Dart

I spent the Saturday competing in Google Code Jam 2021 qualification round, and earned a well-rounded rank: exactly 10000.

Code Jam is about Algorithms

My first time competing in Code Jam was 2012. I heard about Code Jam earlier that year, from a flyer posted by the ACM student chapter at University of Arizona. Since then, I participated in Code Jam every year, and 2021 is my 10th year competing in Code Jam.

Code Jam isn't about code or jam, but about mathematics and algorithms. Although I'm a good network programmer and write a lot of production quality code, I struggle at algorithms especially when I'm under a time pressure. Nevertheless, I continued competing in this annual event, so that I can remember the last bits of algorithms, and occasionally learn a few new tricks by reading through the post-round analyses.