Photos: Eastern Europe dominates Google Code Jam

Programmers from across Europe went head to head in Dublin at Google’s first ever Code Jam Europe event this week, competing for a share of a €30,000 prize fund.

Nearly two-thirds of the 50 finalists were from Eastern Europe, with 11 from Poland. The UK had only two finalists from an original entry list of over 1,000. Google uses the Code Jam competition as a way of attracting engineering talent to its European R&D centres.

The top three winners were:
1. Tomasz Czajka from Purdue University, Warsaw, Poland
2. Petr Mitrichev a student from Moscow State University, Russia
3. Roman Elizarov, St Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics & Optics, St Petersburg, Russia

The competition involved cracking coding challenges that whittled around 9,000 entrants to the final 50. The Dublin final saw competitors devising their own algorithms, winning points if their code proved to be unbreakable and losing points if someone else managed to crack it.