Poles Ranks First in Computer Coding

It's nice to see that Poland, a mid-size country in Europe, ranks #1 world-wide in computer programming. According to "TopCoder", not only does Poland have the best information technology graduates...Warsaw University is the top school for this field in the world as well. Some statistics from the "TopCoder" website:

Handle Rating

1 Poland 2916.64
2 Russian Federation 2912.06
3 China 2765.70
4 Ukraine 2517.32
5 Canada 2485.28
6 Japan 2395.92
7 United States 2284.77
8 Netherlands 2251.81
9 South Korea 2250.53
10 Slovakia 2219.14

Another area where Poles excel is in the highly intuitive card game of Bridge. Poles rank tops when it comes to Bridge competitions. It doesn't surprise me then that it is the Poles that cracked the Enigma code during WWII for the Allied cause. Congratulations Poles!

I think u r getting confused with hacking, LOL

Just kidding, the level here is very high. I used to teach at a company here called ENTE and they excel, employing cutting-edge technology.

there also known to play a mean game of chess.

got a link to this wild claim?

the WBF ranks 1 pole in the top 20

worldbridge.org/departments/mps/mastersinfo.asp?qcat=O

and can we have direct link to the other claims you make, please

Yes, one of many links is from an article which appeared in the NY Times, entitled "BRIDGE; Finally, a Nod to Unheralded Polish Players". Here is one quote from that article:

" A brief study of world bridge of the last 20 years shows that Polish experts are among the best on the planet.

They have won bunches of titles at every level, but the bridge public is barely aware of this. They get far less credit than they should because of a language problem. Their English is adequate for bridge discussion at the table, where its use is mandatory, but they do not have the confidence to buttonhole Western journalists and offer examples of brilliance."

Even though the article is dated from April 7, 2003, Poland's success in international Bridge competitions continues even today.

Seriously, this seems quite possible. I've come to Poland with some 10 years programming experience and find it difficult to compete with Polish programmers. Not only do they hold good quality degrees but they also keep themselves really up to date with the latest technologies.. or so it seems when they try to tell me I'm out of date and therefore want me cheap...

If what they say is true, then yes they are good, but I've yet to see the "proof in the pudding", so to speak.

But, I've not seen any evidence either way yet, so I'll wait and see before coming to any conclusion. If gadu-gadu is anything to go by... then that's proof -against- this claim... seriously, a Polish chat client that doesn't even let me type Polish characters! (using the windows language bar set to PL which works fine in all other applications) - not to mention the crashing...

You might want to read "usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry/2007-03-13-google-poland_N.htm - Why Google put a research lab in Poland" in 'USA Today'. I can provide many more links to relevant articles if you wish. There is plenty of proof of the excellent reputation of Polish programmers out there already.

Excellent, thank you. I had little doubt that the programmers were good, I just reserve making any judgement without evidence. It's just a shame they are paid such poor salaries where in England we have a shortage of programmers and salaries are much better.

what about india? i use freelance sites to find programmers regularly and it seems like they are the majority. i'm surprise india is not on the top 10.

I once did a computer program thing on my Commador 64.
It was a big long list that I found in a computer magazine, it did not say what it was, all it said was type this in and watch it go. So it took three days to type the bloody thing, checking and double checking and then i pressed enter and a blank screen came up, and then I read it again "And watch it go".

actually, there are two Poles in the 1st top 20:

Cezary Balicki and Jacek Pszczola. The list doesn't mention Michal Kwiecien who was Pszczola's partner and won numerous international prizes, or other great Polish bridge playes from yonder years.

Bridge is very popular in Poland. No, not as popular as soccer, but there is a great following. Surprisingly, any card games were forbidden in Polish schools, so as a teeneager I played bridge with friends during classes - from memory. We dealt cards during a short break and then using a system of subtle signs we played the game with cards in our pockets, instead of listening to idiocies of our Russian language teacher. (I was a good player but no, I was not a bridge champion of any kind).

As for computer programming and computer course in Poland, well, I'm not sure if many from North America would be brave enough to study computer science over there. I went through the curricula in some Polish universities. Wow!!!.

They do North American graduate level work in undergrad schools. Very impressive.


India has a huge "mass" of programmers. They are competent, some are great. I worked with a few. One was really a good one, the other ones were OK.

Polish programmers are well known, it's almost a stereotype, but the reputation is a double-edged sword. I remember hearing on XBOX live for example, that the service wasn't extended to Poland for security reasons, I doubt that, but that's what these guys were talking about.

I was playing Yahoo! pool once, this guy asked me "asl" I said poland, and he said - ah you guys cheat with your hacks and all that. I kicked his ass at the game pretty bad and he got pissed, called me a cheater for being polish (i'm not polish) and booted me!

yes, for some odd reason, the Poles love playing cards. I imagine it is due to the long cold winters when they do not want to go outside. However, it is not true that the Poles are in first place in computer work, there are far more Russians experienced than the Poles.

I have no idea how good the Poles are at bridge but I know they suck at poker. I have a monthky poker night and we (ex pats) end up cleaning them out. They play their own version of poker, I dont know where it comes from but it sucks.

Then Russians should be on top of the world in Bridge - especially those in Siberia.


Of course there are more Russians. After all there are over 4 times more Russians living in the world (even though some 5 percent have cirrhosis from alcohol). And yet, there are only twice as many top coders in Russia as there are in Poland.

Rank Name Member Count Rating
1 Russian Federation 617 2912.79
2 Poland 309 2903.37
3 China 4261 2766.36
4 Ukraine 200 2511.95
5 Canada 100 2482.09
6 Japan 250 2426.17
7 United States 483 2292.95
8 Netherlands 25 2252.11
9 South Korea 146 2248.69
10 Slovakia 45 2230.05

Now schools. Warsaw on top, and Wroclaw in the first 10.

Rank Name Member Count Rating
1 Warsaw University 50 2691.66
2 Tsinghua University 78 2509.77
3 Moscow State University 54 2441.20
4 Saint-Petersburg State University 36 2335.35
5 Saint-Petersburg State University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics 33 2217.58
6 University of Tokyo 37 2187.85
7 Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University 38 2179.95
8 Zhejiang University 158 2167.84
9 University of Wroclaw 26 2120.62
10 Saratov State University 19 2057.13


Poker is not a game of intellect. It's a game of instinct.

Precisely. This is why I stressed in my original post that Poland is a 'mid-sized' country. In this respect, Poland's rankings in Coding, Bridge, and anything to do with high level mathematics and logic is very impressive. Couple this with the fact that Poland only became a free democracy in 1989 after being suppressed by the Soviet Union for 50 years, and Poland's reputation and statistics regarding the above mentioned fields is quite outstanding.


Excellent and factual rebuttal! :-)

z_darius
Where do these figures come from? Who can be so precise?

and where do all your statistics and generalisations about Poland come from? you never answer that question cos you just make yours up.

I am not arguing about Poland having some of the best coders in the world, but can someone tell me why recently (since WW2) nothing highly advanced has come out of Poland? There was a game called the witcher but it hardly showed off the skills of these top class coders. Is it because of language problems?

From [topcoder.com/stat?c=country_avg_rating] the organization responsible for the competitions and the stats.

Computer programmers can. Attention to detail is critical in this field. It's their job to be precise. Did you already forget what is being discussed here?


It did. You simply don't know because you are a young kid interested in games, which btw. are coded by quite a few Polish programmers, who acquired their skills in Poland. You may have heard about siliconknights.com/main.html Silicon Knights Inc and their latest game "Too Human". I happen to know the owners of the company and at least a dozen Polish programmers working for them.

The fact that you don't know this or that, or that you haven't heard about one thing or another only says something about you.

Now, on a more serious note, Poland was penalized by the USSR for its slow pace of communist developments. The punishment was designation of Poland as an agricultural country withing Comecon. Bulgaria was name an IT centered country within the Soviet block. You are certainly familiar with some of Bulgarian programmers' efforts, at least indirectly. Up till about late 1980's about 50% of comuter viruses came from Bulgaris.

I wonder how many of the inventions below have you heard, and how many of them do you even understand.
Henryk Magnuski - inventor of Walkie Talkie, which, eventually, has evolved into cellphone.
Mieczysław Gregory Bekker - one of the key designers of Lunar roving vehicle.
Stefan Kudelski- inventor of Nagra audio recorders
Tadeusz Sendzimir - invented revolutionary methods of processing steel and metals used in every industrialized nation of the world
Henryk Zygalski - designed the "perforated sheets," also known as "Zygalski sheets". Variation of these were used for a couple of decades in computers.

Jacek Karpiński- responsible for the construction of the first transistor-based differential analyzer and for the development of one of the first machine learning algorithms and techniques for character and image recognition. He is also the designer of one of the first minicomputers - the K-202. The computer was ahead of its time and probably the fastest.

Wiesław Romanowski- the first commercially feasible rendering software system called ARTS (Accelerated Ray Tracing System), based on ray tracing technique.

Andrzej Trybulec - developed the Mizar system

Jan Węglarz - discovered the so called two-phase method, but unfortunately he published his discovery in a Polish newspaper, so it was ignored. Western scientists received accolades instead. He refused many offers from the west and opted for his own research team in Poland.

Michał Zalewski- one of the tope "white hat" hackers.

I'm too lazy tonight to post names of Polish mathematicians whose work make a lot of computer advances possible. I'll leave that exercise as your homework. I am certainly not interested in computer games, with their half life of about a year or two.

Thanks for the info daruisz but there is no need to be such an abusive C****. You have proven urself to be one of those ppl who like to brag about Poland's achievements however small they are. Poland still makes a rather insignificant impact on the world even considering those things you mentioned. I dont herear Poles who actually live in Poland ranting on like you. We all gotta feel proud of our culture but you dont hear us brits ranting about our significant contributions to the world. There is more to the world of science than computers u know.

Actually, despite this being a forum about Poland, you do get that kind of ranting.
What could possibly be wrong with Darius giving a bit of information about this stuff on a thread which is relevant to that kind of information?

Of course nothing wrong at all but he called me a little kid and made out I was stupid if you read all his entry. I just see him as one of these "poles" living in USA/Canada who have no culture of their own so they try to latch on to another. I know a British guy in my home town who is exactly like that. He is a 3rd gen Pole and thinks he knows everything about the country despite the fact he hasnt even visited the country.

and what part have you played in any of them? blow your own trumpet.not some other persons.

Thank you time means.

no worries

You asked questions, I provided answers.


No doubt. But the topic is computer science.

Whatever you think I have proven myself to be, you have proven yourself to try and belittle Poles. when that fails you resort to a personal attack on the grounds that your answers have been answered to your dissatisfaction.

If you really want to know answers you do your own research. It's not hard these days. Use a computer.


I didn't, and I regret. If you ask questions expect answers, not a candy and a pat on the back. So not only do you deserve to be called a kid, but a spoilt one at that.


As a matter of fact I do not feel as a person without culture (if you come even close what culture is). Now, what is yours? What are your achievements other than being under English rule?


That's a pretty desperate comment :)

Let's say my part was not bigger or smaller than what welshguyinpola contributed to the wonderful inventions by the nation that has been ruling his for centuries. And whatever I did or didn't has no bearing on the fact that welshguyinpola knows squat about the topic he decides to keep alive.

really why?
i would be more impressed if you actually said something you have done recently.helped an old granny across the road or some other good deed

Let me rephrase what happened:

scorpio: Poles Ranks First in Computer Coding
welshguyinpola : I am not arguing about Poland having some of the best coders in the world, but can someone tell me why recently (since WW2) nothing highly advanced has come out of Poland?

z_darius: [see the list I posted, research what these achievements are if you have a trouble understanding]

welshguyinpola: Poland still makes a rather insignificant impact on the world even considering those things you mentioned. (this coming from a guy from Wales, of all places. And who the fvck is welshguyinpola?).

time means: (to z_darius, surprisongly, not to welshguyinpola) and what part have you played in any of them? blow your own trumpet.not some other persons.

My achievements, or lack thereof, proves nothing in the context of this thread (see the first post). Have you asked welshguyinpola the same questions?

Hence a clear sign of your desperation, unless you are under 13 years old. In which case... well, go and get yourself an ice cream.

Ok dariusz, canada is full of culture and full of history, packed full of historical buildings and oh all that significance to the world. I dont brag about Britains great history cos I was not part of it. Wales is not an independent country nor would we want to be. We are not 'ruled' by England as you would see if you did some research, we have our own government and actually we have free medicene education etc in Wales which England doesnt have and also Wales has taxing powers as well. Obviously your research in this area is lacking just as my research in the area of some old Polish discoveries. If you wanna go down this route, just look at all the famous Welsh film stars in hollywood: - Zeta-Jones, Hopkins, Burton, Gruffydd, Ifans, Hopkins. Also Wales has had a massive influence on the music scene, Manic st Preachers to name just 1.