Programming Competition

Monday night I participated in my first ever programming competition.  It was an interesting experience which I thoroughly enjoyed.  The competition was held in the Computer Science department, and was open to all students of the University.

The goal of the competition was to find people to go on to the regional competition, which will be either at Murray State University or at Louisiana State University (really want to say something here, but I'll refrain...).  The reason for the two locations is that it would depend on what date the team decides to go.

In the competition we were given four problems to solve, and we were told we could access the official documentation for Java, C, and C++ (the three permitted languages), as well as make use of any printed materials we brought with us.  Out of the four problems, I was only able to solve one during the competition.  Towards the end I sort of stopped trying, since I knew I wouldn't get the others done in time, so I had a little fun with them and tried different things out.

Out of the eight people who competed, I came in sixth, which was fourth out of the people who are eligible to go on to regional.  Since a team consists of three people, this leaves me as the first alternate, and I've been told by the coach (who is one of my teachers and a friend), James Church, that I'd go with the team to the competition whether or not I competed myself.  I'm all for this.

Considering this was my first time doing a competition, I'm happy with my one correct answer, and with just not coming in last.  One thing I learned during the course of the competition, and while looking at Church's solutions afterwards, is that I need to learn a lot more about the classes Java provides for me, as there were a few I didn't know about that would have allowed me to solve another problem or two very easily compared to how I was trying to do things.

This competition is another event that has inspired me to learn more about programming and to improve what I know by practicing.  In my free time, I plan on attempting more problem solving exercises like those given in the competition.

Jeff Atwood (@CodingHorror on twitter) retweeted something this morning that was right along these lines.  The post was from @enmerinc and said "How to become a better developer: 1) Go to #StackOverflow 2) Pick a question outside of your comfort zone 3) Open your IDE and solve it"

I really liked that idea, and plan on doing that from here on out.  I don't know that I'll even average one problem a week, but even so, I'll learn something.