The igNew Company holds a monthly code contest.

For instance, this month’s challenge IS:
Without the use OF a CURSOR, WRITE a stored PROCEDURE that accepts a total sale amount, tax rate, AND total NUMBER OF payments; THEN inserts required payment schedule records (id, pre tax payment amount, tax amount, total amount). ANY remainder should be evenly split among ALL payment amounts, WITH the final payment amount reduced accordingly.

Participants may win a small prize AND IN exchange the company gets SOME visibility. It seems a fair deal TO me.

What I find really interesting about this (AND similar) contest IS its use AS a learning technique TO improve the teaching OF software development courses. I bet students would find far MORE appealing TO participate IN a coding contest than TO do my “homework” exercises, even IN BOTH cases they may be solving ON a similar problem. This additional motivation can make them TO try harder (AND thus, learn MORE).

Therefore, I am pretty convinced that “participation in coding contests” can be a very powerful learning technique. ANY company willing TO organize AND sponsor a modeling contest?

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