The document discusses the dynamics and addictive nature of participation in an open programming contest for MATLAB programmers, highlighting both the collaborative and competitive aspects of code development. Participants experience intense engagement, often at the expense of their personal lives and well-being, while engaging in behaviors like code tweaking and modification. Various patterns of participation and motivations are analyzed, illustrating the tension between personal ambition and collaborative spirit in coding competitions.

1. Addictive Collaboration Patterns of Participation in an Open Programming Contest Ned Gulley The MathWorks, Inc.

2. Competitive Wikipedia

4. MATLAB Programming Contest: A week-long open collaborative competition for MATLAB programmers

5. Entries are automatically scored, ranked, and displayed immediately Code, author, and score are visible at all times Anyone can modify anyone else's code and resubmit it as their own

7. Protein folding

8. leaders leaders 1 karim 2 carol 3 eric karim. fcn f(x) ... view entry new entry ned. fcn f(x) ... 1 ned 2 karim 3 carol 4 eric

9. Doug says: “ I do not understand why anyone would be interested in participating in a contest where a winning idea is immediately co-opted and tweaked by another player.”

10. Stijn says: “ I started Monday after work. I worked late, let's say 4 or 5 hours. I started to become ‘obsessed’. At home, although I am a father of three children, my full-time job was working on the contest. I didn't sleep much. I worked maybe 10 hours after work each day. On Thursday it was clear that I wasn't going to be able to work seriously (for my job), so I took a day off on Friday.”

11. “ This is my first MATLAB contest and it is giving me far too much enjoyment. It's one of the most addictive things I have tried. The exercise is improving my programming skill, but in return I have backache, a terrible diet, no social life, and not much of a work life either. Also, I have experienced physical trembling while making the final preparations to send a code into the pit. Is that normal?” Nathan says:

12. Patterns of Participation

13. Big changes (Leaps) function f = fb(n) a = [0 1; 1 1]^n; f = a(2); function f = fb(n) if n > 2 f = fb(n-1) + fb(n-2); else f = 1; end Generating the nth Fibonacci number: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...

14. Small changes (Tweaks) ... y = [1 2 3] ... ... y = 1:3; ...

15. Better Time Wednesday Monday Score = k1 * (algorithmic result) + k2 * (CPU time)

18. Punctuated equilibrium (the zigzag of innovation)

19. CPU Time Cost Function

20. Cost Function CPU Time

21. Cost Function CPU Time

22. Collaboration

23. Code Market Share by Line Count

24. Schools of thought (clans)

26. Innovation uptake

27. First use of conv First leader with conv

28. Systematic variation (tweak bombs)

31. Social signaling

32. • Scrambled Eggs • Rotten Eggs • I didn't start the fire • don't get obfuscated ... follow the light • You Call This Collaboration? Give Me A Break

33. • Tweak Tweak Tweak • tweakfest • tweak-o-rama • slippery ground (tweak me) • Seems like everyone's just tweaking • I said to myself not to do this kind of thing... • Poopdeck Pappy gives in to peer pressure

34. • I wish I knew how this works

35. Phase transitions

36. novel conserved deleted

37. Line-by-line Analysis

38. History Flow

39. Knapsack, all

40. Knapsack, leaders only

41. Knapsack leaders

42. Knapsack shortest path

43. The shortest path

44. Two views of history

45. Broad variations

46. Deep variations

47. Motivation

48. Personal glory or Collaboration ?

49. Behavior of a jealous coder Last-minute entry Obfuscation Spaghetti code No comments Sandbagging Sock puppeting Combinations

50. “ Behavior” of successful code High rank Time on top High status author Clarity Elegance Comments Novelty

51. The coder wants to block code propagation The code wants to propagate! The essential tension:

52. For the coder Make participation easy Reward vanity Many cheap prizes Darkness period Easy tweaking For the code Encourage copying Highlight changes Punish complexity Discourage obfuscation Easy tweaking Managing the tension:

53. A chicken is only an egg’s way of making another egg. A hacker is only code’s way of making more code.