they said python is easiest,
but for php,i saw the voodoo priest.
nice contest,little money,
but i already did php ritual.
Everywhere, I hear the voices screaming
php unwriten scripts haunting
everyday is another busy day
i quit smoking the day i was born minus one
day
killed six snakes since then
but i hate them cheap,i hate them python
i learnt to ask for what i need too
switch no compromise too.
They said python is easiest
but if it was php guy's skill test
we for don do am the day seun posted it minus one day!

-no offeinse

@omo.
please i need a programming for guide me,
can u help me out.pls give me ur contact

I was so embarrassed to be a Nigerian developer when I read this thread. How are your comments relivant to the topic. If this was posted on an Indian, Ghanian or South African, it would have been done by now. All of you are just speaking GRAMMER. Nairaland is full of proGRAMMERS. Keep quiet and do the work or save your comments for the pulpit.

your head is correct ^^^ .

All dem ATANAs - All talk and No Action

Fayimora:
Would you consider a Ruby implementation using Rails? Don't mind and am not in for the money,  Just wanna see how well you can rate me

I would take a look at it, out of curiosity, but you'll not be eligible for the prize or future deals.

Seun, maybe it would have been better to have asked Python programmers to send in applications or their portfolio, then do this sudden death thing amongst them. That's for another time anyways.

Good idea, but the applications in their portfolios will probably not satisfy the technical requirements.

Oga seun , CYBER SLAVERY

Question about this part of the requirements

"The participants in the auction indicate the amount of dollars they want and the exchange rate at which they want to buy the dollars. The CBN looks through the bids and selects an optimal exchange rate at which (almost) all the dollars for sale in the auction will be bought. Those who offered to buy at that exchange rate or higher will get the amount they asked for at the chosen exchange rate. Those who offered less naira per dollar than the chosen rate
will get nothing. The rate at which the CBN sold dollars becomes the official exchange rate."



To sell the most dollars, the trivial solution would be to select the lowest bid.

Could you clarify the selection process of the optimal rate?

@wassolldas: Let's say the CBN wants to sell exactly 1000 dollars, and the bids are as follows, sorted by rate:

ahmad wants $300 at ₦170 per dollar
bola wants $400 at ₦165 per dollar
chisom wants $250 at ₦160 per dollar
uche wants $200 at ₦155 per dollar
tinubu wants $500 at ₦150 per dollar

$300 < $100                                           
$300 + $400 = $700.   $700 <= $1000
$700 + $250 = $950.   $950 <= $1000
$950 + $200 = $1150. $1150 > $1000.  so uche is out, and anyone whose bid is not higher [/i]than uche's

The winning bidders are ahmad (₦170), bola (₦165), and chisom (₦160), because their bids are [i]higher than uche's bid. The official exchange rate will be the lowest rate offered by a winning bidder.  That's ₦160 or chisom's bid.  That's the rate all the winning bidders will have to pay per dollar for the amount of dollars they submitted bids for.

So out of the $1000 offered for sale, ahmad will pay ₦(300*160) for $300. bola will pay ₦(400*160) for $400, and lucky chisom will pay ₦(250*160) for $250.  uche and tinubu will get nothing and the CBN will be left with $50 after selling $950.  It's a very simple algorithm.

Notes: * Your code should not allow bidders to bid more than what they have in their naira accounts.  In the above example, Ahmad's bid for $300 at ₦170 per dollar should have required the loading of at least ₦(300*170) into his account before bidding, even though he will ended up paying only ₦(300*160). The change will be left in his naira account.  * Withdrawals and deposits into accounts in the webapp should be simulated, of course. It's just a proof of concept.

seun am not sure u read my earlier post

u need to sort by rate and time not rate only. If chisom n uche put in a bit of 160 naira u choose the first order that reaches d system.

although the auction system u have described is fairly trivial. to make it interesting u can also add the ability to modify orders or cancel orders as well.

I saw your post; it's cool that you're working on such things, but I need a pythonista at the moment.

UPDATE: I see what you mean about time now.

What I had in mind is this: once the marginal bid (which cannot be accepted, e.g. uche's bid above) is determined, the winning bidders are those who bid above the price offered by that marginal bidder.  So if uche bid 160 instead of 155, same as chisom, he would still be the marginal bidder, but chisom won't be among the winning bidders because she did not offer a price higher than the "cut-off".  I'll correct the original explanation now.  Thanks pointing out the problem. Your alternative approach of considering time makes more sense, but I don't want to change the rules.

Number_One:

I was so embarrassed to be a Nigerian developer when I read this thread. How are your comments relivant to the topic. If this was posted on an Indian, Ghanian or South African, it would have been done by now. All of you are just speaking GRAMMER. Nairaland is full of proGRAMMERS. Keep quiet and do the work or save your comments for the pulpit.

Thunder fire your head, na who you dey talk to?

I don't think that this is very hard. Probably a 12-15 hour job (max) if you already have used CherryPy or Python.

The logic is simple (just rank the orders by price, and then when the auction closes loop and sell until you've sold out all your inventory to the highest bidders).

Only real wrinkle I can think of off the top of my head is that you might need some sort of external process (e.g., a cron job on unix) to close the auction when it ends (might not be able to do this within the web-app itself.)

Honestly if this was open to Ruby as well, I'd do it.

BTW Seun, why do you say no ORM?

Performance reasons. . .? Or just to make it more tedious?

Anyway if it were me doing this, I'd have 3 different object models:
1. Auction model (Object that stores the date when the auction closes. Each auction has_many bids)
2. User (representing different customers. Each user potentially has_many bids)
3. Bids (representing different bids.)

I think the logic for creating the above objects is fairly simple. You allow people to create User accounts that store the amount of money they have, as well as personal info. You allow them to submit bids assuming the auction hasn't closed. And then an external cron job then calls a method of the Auction model to process the results of the auction.

ekt_bear:

I don't think that this is very hard. Probably a 12-15 hour job (max) if you already have used CherryPy or Python.

Just wondering how long it will take a seasoned programmer to learn how to use CherryPy.

It is said that if you know C++ , you can learn Java in a day.
Most people can also convert their code to BASIC on the fly.

If we assume that Python is indeed the easiest language, then a PHP programmer should be able to port code easily as well.

I want to assume that willingness and ability to acquire new knowledge is part of the softskills being tested in this interview.

If you start working on the main project and progress is based on being able to use a new tool within 48 hrs, the Project Mgr needs to be sure his team wont back down.

Thats my view anyways. Nothing personal.

Hmm, maybe I should take up Python. Might find it useful for some side projects

Fascinating auctioning process. It's actually a lot simpler than I'd have expected. Clearly Seun, the goals of this exercise isn't to test any algorithm knowledge?

For the other comments about Python. I highly recommend it over most other languages. It's quite easy to pick up and much more powerful compared to PHP which seems to be the language of choice for most Nigerian websites.

-------
@wassolldas: Let's say the CBN wants to sell exactly 1000 dollars, and the bids are as follows, sorted by rate:

ahmad wants $300 at ₦170 per dollar
bola wants $400 at ₦165 per dollar
chisom wants $250 at ₦160 per dollar
uche wants $200 at ₦155 per dollar
tinubu wants $500 at ₦150 per dollar

$300 < $100
$300 + $400 = $700. $700 <= $1000
$700 + $250 = $950. $950 <= $1000
$950 + $200 = $1150. $1150 > $1000. so uche is out, and anyone whose bid is not higher than uche's

The winning bidders are ahmad (₦170), bola (₦165), and chisom (₦160), because their bids are higher than uche's bid. The official exchange rate will be the lowest rate offered by a winning bidder. That's ₦160 or chisom's bid. That's the rate all the winning bidders will have to pay per dollar for the amount of dollars they submitted bids for.

So out of the $1000 offered for sale, ahmad will pay ₦(300*160) for $300. bola will pay ₦(400*160) for $400, and lucky chisom will pay ₦(250*160) for $250. uche and tinubu will get nothing and the CBN will be left with $50 after selling $950. It's a very simple algorithm.

Notes: * Your code should not allow bidders to bid more than what they have in their naira accounts. In the above example, Ahmad's bid for $300 at ₦170 per dollar should have required the loading of at least ₦(300*170) into his account before bidding, even though he will ended up paying only ₦(300*160). The change will be left in his naira account. * Withdrawals and deposits into accounts in the webapp should be simulated, of course. It's just a proof of concept.

Anyone else working on it?

*Peeps in*

Isnt N100,000 naira about £30 in the Uk?

@OP, if you pay me upfront then i will work on it right away

Mr, Cork:

Isnt N100,000 naira about £30 in the Uk?

mr.cork take it easy oo. Naira value has depreciated to dat level

Mr, Cork:

Isnt N100,000 naira about £30 in the Uk?  

LWKM!

All these boys self dey too greedy. Kilode, na be 100,000 cowry shells na.

I write a fair amount of Django code and would probably turn in a solution in a weekend if you didn't have any restrictions. But for what you're asking for I'll wait till you raise the pot to $1.5 k before turning something in. Seems fair given what you're asking,

Haba, ole ni awon boys yi o. SEUN, mark my words, the moment you raise the price of this stuff to 500k be the time i will turn in a solution literarily overnite
- you know those stuffs them dey call nightly build.

really business man. lol

It's about the principle of the matter. The scope's pretty broad for a competition and the requirements are a tad too specific compared to a competition site like www.topcoder.com.

I'm just safeguarding interests. I know I could easily pull this off, but the dude has to make it worth my while so to speak.

@Poster:
Have you forgotten that it application development generally is not for the "not so smart"
You want someone to spend sleepless nights for #70,000 and then send you the source code
Come on, You could try posting an ad for a developer, I think that would get better responses,

Hello Mr. Seun,

To prove your sincerity on this competition you would have said that we should upload what we have designed in our site and then we provide you the username and password as an acting CBN governor. Even in my web design platform, I do not give my customers the code but I allow them test it on my site untill they are satisfy.

If you can modify it then fine I am in. if not I consider it as 419. If you are sincere contact me admin@rojadhost.net. The good thing is that our location might not require anyone travelling

Considering the nature of the challenge,
I have a feeling that Seun may be planning
to introduce bidding for advert space on
Naira-land/list.

bakenda:

Considering the nature of the challenge,
I have a feeling that Seun may be planning
to introduce bidding for advert space on
Naira-land/list.

Hmmn. Nice conspiracy theory.

You mean say Seun no sabi code?