Do you like programming puzzles?
Do you like working together closely?
Do you want more practice thinking and DOING?
Do you want to broaden your programming
expertise?
Do you like a challenge and
a competition with a chance for big rewards?
Would
you like credit for a CS Major elective?
Join the ACM Programming Team!
We need undergraduates and graduate students!
Please contact the coach, Dr. Harrington. Contact information: www.cs.luc.edu/~anh/officehrs.html
Every year the ACM puts on a programming competition for several three-member teams from each school. You can just participate in practices, or generally undergrads and first year grad students are eligible to compete, though the actual rules are more baroque. In particular for the Fall 2018 competition, eligible students include:
People who have
started college in 2014 or later,
OR were born in 1995 or
later,
OR possibly if you have completed no more than 8
semesters after high school (Fall 2018 doesn't count) AND not have
significant programming experience at times you were not a student
(other than summer jobs). If you are in this last category,
let me know promptly - a waiver must be acquired,
and there is a deadline on the waivers!
Students who do not satisfy the above criteria can still practice with us, and undergrads may enroll in Comp
314/315, as long as they have
We compete on Saturday, November 3 all day (genrally the first Saturday in November). An excellent description of most aspects of our Mid-Central Regional Competition is http://www.icpc-midcentral.us/. Winners get to go to the International Finals. See http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/ for detailed information.
First
Organizational Meeting was Tuesday Aug 28, 4:15-5PM, Doyle 214 conference room, to answer questions and
plan meeting times. Meeting times have generally been 5 hours on a
weekend, five times before the competition (roughly every two weeks),
plus a reflection hour in the week after each practice.
If you are interested in our practices,
whether you can attend the organizational meeting or not, please fill
out the data form at:
https://goo.gl/forms/37rRMcA9bMpSJQ5p1
We will practice with old competitions. Generally a team will agree on their language, C, C++, Java or Python, though it is possible to have one problem in Java and the next in C++.... Students can join the team for the first time while taking COMP 271. Of course, advanced students are very welcomed to jump in any time, but you are encouraged to start early in your studies and return in later years after more advanced programming/algorithms courses! I am happy to have a second or third team with beginners, gaining experience in practice and in the actual competition.
If you like, undergraduates can earn 3 units of credit in two years of participation, 1 unit of credit the first year and then 2 units in succeeding years by enrolling in Comp 314/315 and by participating in the practices. Full-time undergraduate students now pay no extra for going up to 21 credits, but you need to apply to your Dean to go over 18 units.
See Basic Strategy for a more complete idea of the competition/practice dynamics, strategy, and sample problems.
Past teams have agreed that it is important to have practices as
much like the real competition as possible. That means 5 hours
long! I have never had a team that could agree on a five-hour
weekday time. We have generally done 5 weekend practices,
coming about every other week, generally including the last
weekend before the competition.