Google's flagship team programming competition to go virtual due to pandemic

Hash Code 2021, Googles flagship team programming competition, is back in a virtual avatar owing to the ongoing pandemic. 'Hash Code 2021' will kick off with the Online Qualifications on February 25 and wrap up with the 'Virtual World Finals' in April.

Hash Code is for students and professionals around the world where people pick the team and programming language and Google picks an engineering problem for them to solve. This year's contest kicks off with an Online Qualifications, where your team can compete virtually from wherever you'd like, alongside your virtual hub, an online meet up where teams from the same university, coding club, office or organisation can compete alongside one another.

"Join developers around the world as they grow their coding skills and work to optimise real Google engineering problems," Google said in a statement on Tuesday. Registration is now open for 'Hash Code 2021'. Hash Code problems are based off of real Google engineering problems. Past problems have covered challenges like automating smartphone assembly and designing the layout of a Google data centre.

Google said the beauty of Hash Code is that there is no right answer to any of its questions."The problems for each round are optimisation problems, meaning you and your team can submit a solution, optimise it and submit it again. Because there is no right answer, your team can submit multiple solutions during a round".