In an effort to further engage the developer community (as well as maybe find a couple of great programmers that might consider joining our team), we recently held a programming challenge. With the contest over and the results in, we are making the solutions available on github -- you can find them here:
https://github.com/churchillnavigation/challenge1
The nature of this particular problem mirrors many that we face in the development of our virtual globe and augmented reality products -- we often want a solution to a complex problem that runs fast (much faster than video frame rates), doesn't use any more resources than necessary, with an implementation that is lightweight and easy to understand and maintain. While it is difficult to design a challenge that captures all of that (ours was rather one-dimensional, with speed as the only measured variable), it is often the case that when we see a solution we like -- even if it's not the fastest -- it may strike us as particularly elegant. Stefan's solution, for example, is worth looking at as an excellent example in this regard (note how short & simple the source code is, plus his notes, graphs, and "Lessons Learned"):
https://github.com/sDessens/churchill-challange
Checks will be going out to the winners shortly, and our thanks to everyone who participated in the contest for making it fun and challenging!
Programming Challenge Results
February 16, 2015