Coding For Dollars

Australian doctoral student John Dethridge beat fellow programmers to take home a $50,000 grand prize recently as the winner of the second annual TopCoder programming competition. Dethridge used C++ in the championship round, in which participants are judged on speed and quality of solving a programming challenge. About 20,000 people entered the contest, which is designed to connect employers and tech talent. The FBI, Google, and Microsoft are among the employers that have signed up with TopCoder's recruiting service. Dethridge's career plans, though, are on hold until he finishes his studies.