by 
Press release
Cargo Space Challenge is a platform that brings together software engineers, developers, hobbyist from various companies, hubs, bedrooms to solve simple algorithmic challenges for 30mins every 2.5hrs of everyday with rewards such as tees, hosting, domain names, conference passes, flight tickets and various coupons developers would kill for continuously made available by sponsors currently Logical Address, nHub and Young Innovators of Nigeria (YIN).
The developers of Cargo Space believe that a developer should take a break from work every 2.5hrs to join other developers from various places to exercise or solve a simple challenge in a fun way. Like any sport, it must be put in continuous use. Prior to this platform, it’s never been the case for software developers because they are faced daily with software requirements which does just four things – to CREATE, READ, UPDATE and DELETE records (CRUD). In the course of time, they forget the fundamentals of Computer Science – how to for example implement a bubble sort algorithm or use Dijkstra Algorithm to find the shortest path.
So developers make less use of algorithms in their daily lives until when confronted by top companies which require these skill sets then they start re-learning algorithms from scratch again. Cargo Space represents a paradigm shift for engineers who are either bored to death with developing CRUD apps or those who are aspiring to be hired by big firms in the industry such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc. “If you really want to build something cool, a knowledge of algorithm design is required and the best way to learn it is by being thrown problems at your face and working backward to look up what and what is needed to solve the problems from books, not the other way round. This is how we roll at nHub, we train our developers to be two-edge sword – Algorithms and Software Engineering.”, said Retnan Daser, Software Engineer at nHub and Creator of Cargo Space Challenge.
In addition to the hourly challenge, Cargo Space will host a number of annual teambased programming challenges for students such as Cargo Space Challenge 2017 coming up in July (Registration and details), 1st Nigerian Collegiate Programming Contest (NCPC) which would be hosted shortly before the ACM’s International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) sometimes in October 2017. The Cargo Space Challenge Team would commence tours across
Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education in Nigerian about the coming contests from April.
Without a doubt, programming challenge platform is not a new thing in Nigeria. In 2012, The National Mathematical Center (NMC), Abuja held the last – the sixth edition of the National University Computer Programming Contest. Since then, they have shown little or no interest about it again. Also is the annual ACM’s ICPC, A platform that brings together Students from various university in the world to compete to solve algorithmic challenge over the Internet out of which the top three teams represent Africa in the World Finals. ACM known in full as the Association for computing machinery is the most prestigious computing organization in the world. The Africa Regionals is hosted from University of Pretoria, South Africa. It will interest you to know that Nigeria has never got past the regionals and the reason for this are the three words, “Practice Practice Practice” said Retnan who is also experienced in the domain of competitive programming. He is an ex-ACM ICPC contestant, an ICPC coach and an ACM professional member. For students, through continuous participation in Cargo Space Competitions you stand a chance to be noticed by tech companies both local and foreign. Also you get a chance to compete and win the ICPC regionals and represent Nigeria in the world finals. Regardless ACM awards you with free student membership which also affords you the opportunity to access digital libraries, research papers and ACM’s publications such as Communications of the ACM among others.
Obviously, the Cargo Space Challenge platform was created in the image of the contributors – They are problem solvers. Some of the contributors are: Timothy Onogu (WhiZTiM) is a Mechanical Engineer and a Software Engineer, ex-ACM ICPC Contestant, ACM Member, StackOverflow’s Top Nigerian C++ Coder, and 355th legendary Gold Badge earner in C++. He is a last-drop performance freak and works at nHub; Kator Bryan, Co-founder of Logical Address, HackerRank’s Top Nigerian C++ Coder, got noticed by Google on HackerRank, Passed all remote interviews and got invited for on-site interview in Google office Zürich; Kenneth Nnani (Kennethnlogn), ex-ACM ICPC Contestant, ACM member, got his first job after coming top at IrokoTV’s organized programming contest, currently in Amsterdam building stuff for the world leader in online travel and related services, Booking.com, enjoys solving programming challenges during his spare time. Etc.
The Cargo Space Challenge is Open Source and anyone is welcome to contribute to its development. It is written largely in the python programming language. The source code is available on Github . You can host your own programming contest by downloading the source code or rollout your own contest on cargospace.ng which you can do by contacting the admin.
For more information about Cargo Space Challenge:
RetnanDaser
nHub Nigeria 3rd Floor,
TAEN Business Compex,
YakubuGowon Way, Jos.
dretnan@logicaladdress.com