A reality TV-style coding contest will evaluate the abilities of Java software developers from around the world, in a bid to study how development teams collaborate.

The two-week-long Hydra Versus Dragon Coding Competition begins on 23 June, and is expected to reach tens of thousands of viewers with daily online episodes.

Episodes will feature footage of coding sessions, as well as commentary from industry veterans, who will discuss the approaches taken by different teams.

Contestants will be grouped into teams of two and will compete in two styles for two separate problems.

In the Dragon style, teams will tackle the same software problem using a shared version control repository and e-mail communications.

The style has been designed to mimic how software has been developed during the past few decades.

In the Hydra style, teams will tackle different problems in parallel, using a real-time collaborative development environment called UNA.

Submissions will be evaluated by an automated test suite that will reward the quality of code, development time, communication, collaboration, and viewer response.

The competition is organised by a U.S.-based software development start-up called N-BRAIN to prove its “n minds are better than n-1” maxim.

N-BRAIN develops UNA software, which was launched in March 2008 to support collaborative development.

More than US$7000 in prizes is up for grabs, including a Mac Book Pro, Subversion Hosting, agile training and UNA licenses and hosting.

Until 31 May, applications are open to Java 5 programmers who are able to solve N-BRAIN’s Qualification Challenge on an individual basis.