Facebook has been holding internal ‘hackathons’ every couple of months since 2007, giving their developers the opportunity to progress loose ideas into the beginnings of something tangible during the course of one overnight ‘hacking’ session. As Facebook say on their blog, ‘We believe that every engineer has a great idea within them… Hacking is a central part of Facebook's culture. Whether we're building the next big product at one of our Hackathons or creating a smarter search algorithm, we're always hacking to find a better way of doing things.’
This year, however, Facebook have decided to stage a public ‘hackathon’ – the inaugural ‘Hacker Cup’, which Facebook users can enter. They plan for the event to be staged annually, starting with an initial qualification round; entrants will be tested in 3 knockout rounds. Each round comprises a set of algorithmic puzzles to be completed within a specified time frame. The top 25 competitors will be flown to the final, held at Facebook HQ, Palo Alto. The winner receives $5,000 they’ll also be crowned world champion, and receive the ‘Hacker Cup’.
If you want to compete in Facebook’s Hacker Cup 2012, here’s a link to some ‘Engineering Puzzles’ to practice on.
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