The ACM Programming Competition 5:11 PM, Sep 13th, 2008
If you're one of the people I talk to regularily / hang around online in the same sorts of places then no doubt you've heard me talking about the ACM Collegiate Programming competition. If not, the basic gist of it is simple - Teams of 3 compete in a period of 5 hours to solve a set of programming challenges - most heavily algorithms based. You're given one computer to use between the three of you, your choice of 3-4 languages (Java, C, C++ and Delphi - I say 3-4 because Delphi / Pascal is conditional on where you take part) and you then compete. It starts out in regional contests and then proceeds to an international level with teams from each country.