[martinced]

I used to compete in TC many years ago... Back in 2005 or so. I was a high-ranked "yellow" coder in division one. I never made it to red.

It's a humbling experience: some of the topcoders there were simply geniuses. One of them red coder had won some US national math contest four times or so. They were making tens of thousands of $$$ by participating in contests.

You're not beating these "red" topcoder guys: you simply are not smarter than them. And I'd say that saying that a guesstime of 90% of the coders here couldn't reach high-ranked yellow either is probably very conservative.

They're not just Mensa and Triple Nine and whatnots: they're also very knowledgable about computer science and both algorithms and "tricks"... And boy do they type fast.

So what's next in typical HN fashion? Criticizing "intelligence" as not being representative of coding skills, criticizing IQ tests as not being representative of intelligence and criticizing top coder as not being "real programming" and hence not representative of coding skills, etc.

What I really liked about TopCoder is that it was (probably still is) a "put up or shut up".

You think you're better than 75% to 100% of coders out there? Go participate to a few TopCoder contests and get your arse handed to you and then we'll talk again.

(I didn't vote btw)