Your Competition Is Insane

Text on the meme

You: - fairly average software dev - claims not to be competitive, but secretly dreams of landing on the leaderboard at least once - uses a full IDE; wastes a minute right out the gate waiting for it to start - still parsing the problem statement while others are already submitting answers - actually uses a debugger when things aren't working Your competition: Hackerman - InfoSec major - sits at his PC on a near-lethal dose of Adderall waiting for the timer to hit 00:00 - has automated scripts for pulling the input and submitting solutions, and his own library of helper functions for every imaginable problem class - knows your IP at all times ~mbalfstar - research scientist at Intel - does puzzles for fun that are harder than any job you will ever have - so utterly bored with the problems that he creates increasingly ridiculous self-imposed restrictions to keep things interesting - solved last year exclusively in APL on a System/360 emulator, and still finished 9th on the global leaderboard - personal homepage is HTML 2.0 compliant wihbr - software dev from undisclosed Eastern-European country, making 200K/yr for a company you've never heard of - is literally every coding competition - Twitch streamer is using Vim to type and the sounds of a mechanical keyboard - types faster than you can read or think Tharg - Linux kernel hacker - specialization in compiler design - is golfing in some esoteric language nobody has ever heard of - can mentally translate any code he sees to assembly - measures his solutions' performance in actual clock cycles 運用中文名 - overworked Chinese university student, double majoring in theoretical physics and chemical engineering - has been locked into various educational institutions since he was 3 years old - only time outside of school is for piano lessons - can literally only see the relevant parts of the problem statement - you will not understand his solutions without a PhD in discrete mathematics Samir Nagheenanajar - outsourced IT support technician - does puzzles because he has nothing better to do during his shift - forced to solve in Excel because he isn't allowed to install other software - can reveal the face of God using only VBA - rumored to possess the combined knowledge and power of all Indian educational YouTubers

What it means

A programmer compares an ordinary software developer with an absurd lineup of elite competitors in a coding contest. Each competitor is exaggerated into a different stereotype: the stimulant-fueled hacker, the impossibly skilled researcher, the Vim streamer, the esoteric-language golfer, the overworked Chinese student, and the Excel wizard. The joke is that even a competent developer feels hopeless when surrounded by people with wildly excessive skills and preparation.

Who

Samir Nagheenanajar, The Office Michael Scott, The Office

Objects