Telogis team teaches the world how to snowball fight
Jul
It seems even snowball fights aren’t beyond the occasional upgrade or two. As part of the 2010 ACM ICPC competition, a challenge was issued to all programming teams from around the world to fight it out with snowballs. The race was on to program the smartest way to beat the opposition with snowballs.
Snowball fights can get ugly especially when there are bragging rights at stake. Fortunately, no one brought a gun to the fight but when you’ve got the smartest programmers in the world scrapping it out, you know they’ll be bringing their A-game to the table.
So how do you win a snowball fight? Speed and agility are important. Reading the play, ducking, diving, weaving and guessing your opponents next move are also vital aspects to staying alive and avoid wearing a snowball in the face. Snow forts are also permitted as part of a defensive strategy, so you can weather the enemy’s counter-strike.
How do you program all that into a pixelated snowball fighter?
After the initial panic, you hire Joey Scarr, Edwin Flores and Thomas Steinke, also known as Team J.E.T. Joey and Edwin are both working towards honors in Bachelors of Computer Science at the University of Canterbury and are both employed by Telogis®, a fleet management software company that values high-end computer programming.
Team J.E.T. celebrate after winning the Snowball Fight challenge
Teams were given just two weeks to code their snowball fighters. It was like a game of chess, except harder because you didn’t know what your opponents moves were until game time. In fact, the slogan for the competition could well have been very similar to a hit, reality TV show: “Outwit, outplay, outlast”.
The programmers needed all of the following attributes:
- Fast programming skills to both start and finish a project in record quick time
- Adaptability to allow them to take on new tasks never done before
- Creativity to think laterally and approach any challenge from a new angle
- Logical thinking to make sure the challenge was worked through systematically
- Ability to dodge bullets, well snow bullets anyway
After the dust settled, Team J.E.T. had beaten off 16 elite programming teams from around the world to score the most points and win the competition. They really had built the ultimate snowball fighting machine.
Telogis values smart programming
It’s this kind of programming that Telogis looks for in its developers. Developers who are sharp, agile and can respond intelligently to new challenges. Fleet tracking is an industry that is constantly evolving and benefiting from new technology. These developments are opening up lots of opportunities for fleets to monitor and manage their vehicles in new ways, resulting in productivity gains and a more efficient fleet overall.
But you need smart programmers who can capitalize on these new technologies to build that into your fleet management software. If you’re with Telogis then you’ve made the right choice, and you can rest easy knowing you’ve got some of the sharpest minds working on new ways to make your fleet management software even better and more useful.
Team J.E.T. showed that brilliant programmers are not only good for winning snowball fights but can build great applications for operators to manage and run profitable fleets.
