2006 ACM Programming Contest Complete 180
prostoalex writes "World finals for 2006 ACM programming contest took place in San Antonio, TX this year, and the results are in. Russia's Saratov State University solved 5 contest problems in record time, followed closely by Altai State Technical University (Russia) with 5 problems solved as well. University of Twente (Netherlands), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China), Warsaw University (Poland), St. Petersburg State University (Russia), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Moscow State University (Russia), University of Waterloo (Canada) and Jagiellonian University - Krakow (Poland) all completed 4 problems."
GO USA!!!!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:GO USA!!!!!!! (Score:1)
Re:GO USA!!!!!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
I wonder if these kids who won will now be looking to attend the best higher educational system in the world, or looking for a well-paying job in the best job market in the world. Wait a minute, that's the good old U S of A.
Best higher educational system... (Score:1)
Re:Best higher educational system... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:GO USA!!!!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
My Birthday (Score:1)
American Teams Get No Support (Score:2, Informative)
The reason American teams will probably never win is because American universities give their teams little to no support. The coach for Georgia Tech was an alumn that works in Atlanta, because no profs will do it. Any tenure track proffesor at a major CS school in America that takes time to coach a contest will not get tenure.
Contrast this to the Chinese team that won last year. The Chinese government bought the coach an SUV, in a country where most people don't have cars. Ameri
Ugh not again... (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:1)
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:1)
No, I did not. I just LINKED to the info
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:2, Interesting)
No prefabricated problems.
More time to do the job.
Any programming language.
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's impressive about the winning solutions is that they went from having nothing to implementing a working program from scratch, under stress in only a few minutes. While that is arguably not applicable to being a programmer in real-life, just as being an Olympic sprinter doesn't prepare you for any particular job, it is certainly a commendable intellectual achievement.
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:2, Insightful)
CSIDC: IEEE Design Competition (Score:1, Informative)
I believe both contests
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:2)
Wow, that's cool, isn't it?
Well, those 15 minutes turned into several hours of maintenance. (He used copy/paste a lot, now try to adjust 20 similar spaghetti php+html+sql pages - no, no templates - when you
And conversely... (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth is that you need both kind of people in software companies. And the other truth is that the people who write the nuggets do interesting work that is worthy of displaying publicly in a contest. And the rest do work that isn't.
Having said that, plumbing competitions [pmmag.com] aren't completely unheard of.
These types are not exclusive, you know (Score:2)
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:3, Interesting)
My own experience is three years of regional contests and two at Worlds. The usual allowed languages are C++ and Java.
In the first year I wrote essentially in the C subset, although I did sometimes make declarations in the middle of a bloc
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, that's like saying the Olympics isn't a real contest of athletics because you're only testing how fast they can run 100 meters. The results don't show who was fastest at 10 meters, 50 meters, or who would be fastest at 150 or 1,000 meters. Recognizing this shortcoming, the Decathlon adds up the scores from multiple events to find the best all-around track and field athlete.
A programming contest is the equivalent of a single track and field event. There's nothing wrong with that, but we have to be careful what conclusions we draw from its results.
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:2, Insightful)
My proposal: make programming competitions more like figure skating, where you get points on different aspects from a variety of judges. Might make a interesting tv show even (probably not in all honesty).
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:1)
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:2)
You're right. Real programmers rarely bother with formatting...
(No, I'm not kidding...I make my money testing their stuff -- don't knock test programming, it's some of the purest computer hacking there is -- and I make about half of it because t
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've spent many years involved in ACM programming contests, as a competitor, coach, and judge. And let me tell you, every team that considers it a hacking contest, and treats it like a hacking contest, LOSES. The teams that write well organized code, with simple straightforward solutions, win the day every time.
I'm not surprised you did poorly.
BTW, of course they compare output files. Would you really expect the judges to give an aesthetic judgment of each program in a five hour contest? "9.8 from the Russian judge..."
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:3)
An example: in my time (1998), we didn't whack our teammate upside the head for doing one of the tasks the real way instead of just going for the naive algorithm. The naive one was O(n^3), the optimal one -- O(n), but max n was... 100. In our national competitions and on most exams done by folks from our fa
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:1)
The last ACM competition I went to (2004), there was a question where you had to implement a solution while keeping in mind the time requirements. Nobody in the country successfully implemented it; in the end, a naive implementation would have taken centuries to run, and a good implementation (after a lot of thought) would have come very close to the time limit imposed on the result submissions.
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:2)
- Bob Hearn, member, Rice 1986 (3rd place) & 1987 ACM programming teams
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:2)
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:2)
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:2)
We all write programs, so we're all programmers, but I definitely think there is a difference between a "computer scientist" and, say, a computer engineer, a code monkey, a web programmer, etc.
The ACM competition is computer science--no
Re:Ugh not again... (Score:3)
Re:Auto-generated /. discussion for 2007 ACM onwar (Score:2)
Category F.
Damn, I've been categorized. Please disregard my observation.
In retaliation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In retaliation (Score:2)
In California, CalTech had to go to Soviet Russia, only to be stolen by what was once their own cannon?
"...what a canonical meme!"
- Slashdov Smirnov
Re:In retaliation (Score:1)
In Capatlist west old cannon moves between university.
In Soviet Russia KGB intercepts hi tech US artillery during transport.
Reminds me of the old joke.
"The USSR and the GDR want to raise the Titanic together,
The US is interested in the gold treasure and the safe full of diamonds,
The USSR is interested in the technology,
And the GDR (East Germany) is interested in the band that played on as everything collapsed around it..."
Re:cannon (Score:2)
Not final scores... (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't update the scores during the last hour to keep suspence for the awards ceremony. So this isn't really news at all, and the post is going to be meaningless as soon as they update the standings. I'm expecting them to be posted soon though as I think the awards ceremony ended recently.
Re:Not final scores... (Score:2)
One Question & A Short Rant (Score:5, Interesting)
It's always interesting to see how advanced these are. Most of the time, I'm really not impressed by the complexity of the assignments, although the optimalization work done by the teams can be pretty 'way-better-than-anything-I-could-ever-do".
2. If you ever see Russian State Universities at the top of anything, be very, very cautious. I studied at MGU (Moscow State University) for a little while, and it was frankly appaling. They were taught extremely specific skillsets, they knew exactly what they would be tested in in advance of tests and didn't study *anything* else. It was like a game of 'getting through Uni without learning *anything*' which outranked anything I've ever seen back home (or heard of in the US). The methology probably lends itself well to predefined, known tests, but it produces practically useless students.
(To be fair, here back home, the ones who really learn something are the ones with a real interest in the subject, and they learn most of it outside class. There were really bright people at MGU too. It was the mindnumbingly staggering uselessness of the average student there which amazed me. It was supposed to be a "Top University".. oh, and you had to bring your own toiletpaper if you wanted to take a dump :)
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
Among the puzzlers, greatly simplified here: Write a program that computes how the gears of a clock can be connected with an hour and a minute hand, based on a provided input shaft speed with a maximum of three gears per shaft. Create a program that can find the maximum numbers of degrees of separation for a network of people. Develop a system to interconnect different nodes of a corporate network in the cheapest possible way.
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:3, Informative)
It looks like you will be able to get them in pdf from from the contest website [baylor.edu]. (As of the time of this posting, the link hasn't gone live.)
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:1)
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:5, Interesting)
You must be talking about another contest, on crack, or a super-genius (I won't hazard a guess as to which). I was on the Berkeley ACM team this year, and the International-level problems are HARD
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:5, Informative)
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
As a two-time contestant at finals myself, I'll split the difference between the two of you. Both times I went the problem set contained a fairly even mix:
1. Problems with obvious good solution algorithms that were easy to code (and everyone got these)
2. Problems that took careful inspect to find a non-exponential brute-force algorithm that were easy to code once you figured this out. (Most teams got these towards the end of the contest)
3. Problems with fairly obvious solutions that were challenging t
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
Well, to be frank; if you're reasonably not-stupid, finding an algorithm that scales well shouldn't be a problem (alot of people seem to be reasonably stupid though.. a lot of people who really ought to know better). Sure, it'll take time, and actually impl
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
In the end, I guess I, just like everybody else, am impressed by stuff I'm bad at, while the stuff I actually have talent won't seem as magical. Sure people are better than me, but they're not *that* better.
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2, Informative)
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
That description sounds a lot like MIT. I felt bad for the Aero/Astro kids asking us for electrical help. Sure we all got B's on it, but...that was like a couple months ago.
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
Appaling (Score:4, Interesting)
It is expected of students to be able to figure out practical applications on their own. MGU in particular is one of the most hardcore Russian schools that is easily on par with _any_ Western college or university for which here in the US you'd be paying _through the nose_. MGU seems to be specifically designed to produce scientists and researchers, not engineers, though. MIFI, MAI, MSTU and NGU on the other hand focus on generating engineers that get shit done. The reason being, they produce most of Russia's engineers who work on weapons and high tech.
Re:Appaling (Score:2)
Moscow didn't impress me no.
You fucking WILL learn linear algebra, physics, differential calculus, discrete mathematics, etc., whether you like it or not.
I know Linear Algebra, Differential Calculus, Discrete mathematics.. Physics is a weak spot though (relativly, took the courses, got bad grades and deserved them).. I finished my Master Thesis in Computer Science. Seriously, I know my shit. I met some re
Re:Appaling (Score:2)
My country is 1/3 the size of Moscow. I'm not especially worried about being on this list.
If anything the education was too broad
Well, there is a large difference in the variety of subjects and the methology. I don't doubt there is greit variety, however; my personal experience, which may have been very skewed due to only being in University and only meeting a limited amount of people, was that the general methology was
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a highly spot-on comment. The problem ACM is now discovering, I suspect, is that in certain countries students at certain universities will work all year to compete in th
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:4, Funny)
As a geek that moved to Moscow recently...were you ever able to find a bookstore that sold computer books in English?
Please!?
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
Hi, Hyfe, you might be very, very cautious about making overbroad comments.
Now I could possibly believe that computer science of Moscow State was not that good (in 1993 they were doing assembler on Abat3 (Z80 clone) when 386 were widespread), but, at the very least, the Math and Physics departments are excellent in compari
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
Well, MGU is the most prestigous University in Russia. I can judge what I saw there. I'll give you that I might just have been unlucky with the students I met, but I seriously wasn't impressed. Obviously, I know nothing of the other universities, but based on my experiences with MGU, I can, and will, advice caution.
To be more specific; What I can say is;
The computer students I met there learnt *everything* volunteraly outside o
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
The computer students I met there learnt *everything* voluntarily outside of class. They generally seemed competent.
The economics students were toss. Seriously. I cannot begin to describe it. I met several, and tried discussing with them. This is probably partly due to a much lower general awareness of politics and economics (not that I blame them, 70 years of disagreement being fatal *will* affect a society)
I spoke better English than the Language students. I
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
Yes, you *can* get through a Russian university programm without learning anything. But still it will require a fair amount of work (or even bigger amount of money for bribes).
As for a narrow skillset... As a CS-student I was taught: descriptive geometry and technical drawing, all sorts of math (algebra, calculus, differential equations, topology, analytical geometry, complex calculus, functional analysis, statist
Re:One Question & A Short Rant (Score:2)
Well, the fact that you seem to be thinking my first language is English is a tribute to our Education System :). Optimalization was a direct translation of 'Optimalisering' which is the Norwegian word.
I need a piece of software in 10 minutes?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I need a piece of software in 10 minutes?!?!? (Score:2)
If I'm asked to do something, I often ask when it's needed - "today" or "yesterday".
Heh (Score:1)
What is impressed me (Score:2)
Re:What is impressed me (Score:2)
During the WWII a lot of research universities were evacuated to Saratov from Ukraine, Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and Leningrad (now Saint-Petersburg). And some universities stayed there when the war was finished.
BTW: Saratov is located in the European part of Russia and it's not "a middle o
Re:What is impressed me (Score:2)
Saratov [wikipedia.org] is a major Russian city on Volga (and that always meant something). Altai is a region in Russia, about the mountain range with the same name. Granted, the latter is relatively backwater. And I, too, feel sympathy for the winners who are far from the usual suspects (who scored well too).
Re:What is impressed me (Score:2)
No joke. ~1 mil. pop. Not to mention Engles across the river, or all the undocumented Kazakstanis. You see, I'm currently attending SGU (Saratovskij Gosudarsvenij Universitet) in their langauge preparatory department. I hope to snag a couple of courses in Mathematics or Comp. Sci before I head back to the states.
, ! , .
The cyrilic above doesn't seem to be comming through, so let me try a transliteration (which, I don't
Re:What is impressed me (Score:2)
well, (Score:1, Funny)
Online ACM problems (Score:5, Informative)
Since the website's a design massacre, to get to the ACM problems you need to click on the link marked THE CII ICPC LIVE ARCHIVE !!! [acmicpc-li...ive.uva.es] in the news bar, or just click on that one right there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Online ACM problems (Score:2)
Waterloo! (Score:5, Funny)
Library [imageshack.us]
I remember it well... (Score:2, Interesting)
The first bump in the road was the compiler on the VAX. "Couldn't it have been a Sparc, or at least a Mac?", I thought, as we spent the first hour of the competition trying to understand how to get the compiler to work. You might as
Nitpick (Score:2)
Wouldn't you have been tied for fifth?
That's not a real progamming compo (Score:2)
http://www.ludumdare.com/ [ludumdare.com]
Creativity, cunning, coding and caffine.
I Remember Being in the Contest (Score:1)
Actual results (Score:5, Informative)
1. Saratov State University (Russia) - 6 problems
2. Jagiellonian University - Krakow (Poland) - 6 problems
3. Altai State Technical University (Russia) - 5 problems
4. University of Twente (Netherlands) - 5 problems
5. Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China) - 5 problems
6. St. Petersburg State University (Russia) - 5 problems
7. Warsaw University (Poland) - 5 problems
8. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) - 5 problems
9. Moscow State University (Russia) - 5 problems
10. Ufa State Technical University (Russia) - 5 problems
11. University of Alberta (Canada) - 4 problems
12. University of Waterloo (Canada) - 4 problems
Four teams each received gold, silver, and bronze (in the above order). For the same number of problems, the order is based on penalty minutes.
Re:Actual results (Score:2)
Re:Actual results (Score:3, Informative)
The top 4 (Saratov, Jagiellonian, Altai, Twente) got gold, the
next 4 silver, the next 4 bronze.
Gordon Cormack
Coach, Waterloo
P.S. Please do lobby ICPC to be more spectator-friendly.
Although they seem to care about the profile of the
contest, they seem indifferent to advertising
and reporting on-line results. They refused to disclose
a scoreboard link in advance; the actual contest time
was not well advertised; even after the start of the
contest
what were the tasks? (Score:1)
Re:what were the tasks? (Score:2)
I competed in the Southeast Regional competition in the US back in about 1991 or 1992 - our team tied with a bunch of others for last place with no problems solved. At the time, it was 10 problems, 6 or 8 hours, choice of C or Pascal as a lan
ACSL (Score:2)
Experience with incompetent judges... (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I must agree with some of the other posters: it's not so much a programming competition. It's more of an algorithms and standard library memorization competition. I seem to recall that knowing *all* the ins and outs of the printf family of functions was pretty important. Looking at the site now, it looks like they provide docs for the standard libraries, I don't think this was the case where I went. Anyway, it's important that you know that Java has a regular expression parser as part of the std lib (and therefore usable in the contest) while C++ doesn't. In real life, if you need a regular expression parser, you go get one. Additionally, looking at last years problems, for example, one of them is a straightforward application of a shortest-path algorithm. Do I remember the inner workings of the common graph algorithms? No, I don't use them very often. But I have my reference book handy if I need it. 99% of the time, I'll just use boost::graph. That problem could be solved quite trivially in 20 minutes with boost::graph. If you want to test my knowledge of graph algorithms, that's fine. My algorithms textbook has many exercises which do just that. Just don't call it a programming test. Everything in my algo class was pen and paper. In fact, if you're a real progammer, and you didn't use boost::graph (or something similar) to solve that problem, you deserve to be fired. Writing your own from scratch is a horrible waste of time and a maintenance nightmare. In fact, the boost libraries probably trivialize a number of ACM problems, what with graph libraries, matrix libraries, parsing frameworks, regular expressions, state machines, and so forth. A programming contest would force you to use these well, not re-write them.
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot Poland! (Score:2)
20 minutes too late (Score:2)
So 10 minutes after, we are already 20 minutes too late.
Sore Losers, really sore losers (Score:3, Interesting)
You americans are a bunch of wet nappies. You take a fucking programming and problem solving contest personally even though none of you were actually there. Not only that but you take it personally on a national level, as if your patriotic pride were somehow damaged because of this.
America is a country that has lots of strengths, such as competitiveness, but also lots of weaknesses. such as an almost total inability to lose with grace.
Maybe it's a good thing that (you americans)(sic) lost this competition.
10 minutes!! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Auckland University (Score:1)
Actually, Adelaide came 37th.
We (the University of Otago) came 27th back in 2004 when I participated. Whatever others say about the contest, I loved it and certainly enjoyed the trip to Prague.
Re:bias article (Score:3, Funny)
Was this sporting event in prison!? Lines of balls
Re:Obligatory! (Score:1)