After all was said and done, here are the conclusions about this competition:
- Entry price: 50 euros. Quite expensive for a coding competition with so many sponsors. Especially since many places were given for free later on, but no refund for me.
- Taxi price: 55 euros. Free taxi ride was promised, another lie.
- Free food: Red Bull that I would never drink. Pizza available after the competition, at 23H, so I bought myself a sandwich for dinner.
- The competition: the questions themselves were quite interesting, but all was spoiled by bugs in the system.
- The ranking: a 7th place, sent to me in a private e-mail. No official letter, no official site, so no proof of anything.
- The prices: a 25 euro voucher for a taxi company (I will probably never use it), and a 6 month free subscription to a meeting site (adopteunmec.com) that I will never use. As an aside, isn't it kind of cliche about geeks not able to meet a partner?
Probably the only positive thing coming out of it was my preparation that allowed me to discover excellent coding challenge sites such as the Euler Project and CodinGame.