October 26, 2020 RDM – 1 Match Highlights and Results

Last week the Topcoder Community helped the ‘Coffeelicious’ Alice manage all her coffee research and even open an e-commerce store. This was done with the help of our new regular software development competitions known as Rapid Development Matches or RDMs. 

In case you missed it, we recently announced a new type of Software Development Competition type known as Rapid Development Matches (RDMs).

The idea behind these competitions is to create an ecosystem where members compete regularly to learn or get better at development. The RDMs will generally have no technology or platform restrictions and can test you on any skill required like Backend, Frontend or even software designing. 

The first Rapid Development Match, RDM 1 had three interesting Coffeelicious problems from shubhamranjan (I am sure he is Coffeelicious) and billsedison, and I had an opportunity to coordinate the round.

MATCH PROCEEDINGS

The registration for the event opened a week before and we saw more than 140 members register for the first match. A temporary leaderboard was set up to show members based on how quickly they submitted to a particular problem. Later, these submissions were passed or failed based on the judging requirements.

Our eyes were glued to the forums while trying to make sure we answered questions as fast as possible, allowing members to submit and not get stuck. The scoring was dependent on speed so the earlier you submitted to the problem, the better the score you got. Also, submissions were forced to maintain at least minimum code quality to pass. 

The round started and we made sure the problem links were updated on time and members had access to that. 

We waited for about forty minutes to see the first submission come in. It was cdharmateja who finally submitted first and we all went ecstatic on the admin channel. Eventually he resubmitted and HeVy became the fastest to submit on the easy one.

In the next hour we saw twenty more submissions come in. The highly rated veterans Sky_ and birdofpreyru also joined in. For the next few hours we were busy in forums. Looking at the leaderboard was very exciting and we had a great time waiting for submissions and watching the leaderboard change.

It was six hours in when we saw our first full set submitted by Sky_.

This is how the leaderboard looked like after the submission phase.

Reviews took more than three days. There was a lot of discussion and learning about how we can get better at bringing more objectivity to RDM problems so that members know what they need to achieve to pass.

Final results were made available and we had more than twenty members with at least one passing submission. Code quality and performance awards were also announced based on the criteria and analysis.

RESULTS

Sky_	–	$500
birdofpreyru	–	$200
blue.nguyen	–	$150
irwan_ap	–	$100
HeVy	–	$100
Yut176	–	$50
koyumeishi	–	$25
Ansary	–	$25
cdharmateja	–	$25
Gaoziqiang	–	$25

FASTEST TO SUBMIT
$50 – HeVy
– Fastest passing submission on Easy Problem 

$50 – cdharmateja 
– Fastest passing submission on Medium Problem 

$50 – birdofpreyru
– Fastest passing submission on Hard Problem

CODE QUALITY AWARDS
$50 – Ansary
$50 – chinvib66

PERFORMANCE AWARD 
$50 – Sky_

Performance Stats
birdofpreyru
8 requests
647 kB transferred
1.3 MB resources
Finish: 2.22 s
DOMContentLoaded: 1.38 s

Sky_
8 requests
1.4 kB transferred
719 kB resources
Finish: 519 ms
DOMContentLoaded: 170 ms

blue.nguyen
13 requests
1.1 MB transferred
4.6 MB resources
Finish: 2.85 s
DOMContentLoaded: 170 ms

irwan_ap
7 requests
292 kB transferred
291 kB resources
Finish: 1.50 s
DOMContentLoaded: 208 ms

MATCH EDITORIALS

Match editorials are available here.

FEEDBACK

There are several areas we are looking to improve in the RDMs as we go, including better scoring, duration, sample submissions, starter packs, automated testing etc. Feel free to share any ideas you have in the RDM forums.

RDM – 2 SAVE THE DATE

The next RDM-2 is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 at 22:00 UTC-5 and will be open for 24 hours