Facebook Holds 2012 Hacker Cup

Registration for Facebook’s 2012 Hacker Cup is officially open, starting a two-month long contest of mental stamina and computing agility.

David Alves, a Facebook mobile engineer with impeccable taste in sombreros, announced the contest details in a note on a page for engineers.

“Programmers from around the world will be judged on accuracy and speed as they race to solve algorithmic problems to advance through up to five rounds of programming challenges,” Alves says. “This is your chance to compete against the world’s best programmers for awesome prizes and the title of World Champion.”

Competitors have little time to train. Round zero starts at 4 p.m. PT on January 20, 2012, and ends precisely three days later. They will be faced with three problems sets, but only need to solve one to advance to the next round. 

Only 500 will make the cut. 

Round two will further whittle their numbers down to 100; round three is when the rock stars emerge.

The top 25 high scorers will be flown into the in Menlo Park, California for a shot at $5,000 USD and title of “World Champion.”  

“Awesome t-shirts for the top 100 hackers coming out of the second online round” will also be on the table, says Alyes.

For full details, check out his note. 

For sample qualification round problems from the 2011 Facebook Hacker Cup, click here.