Various computer-related equipment on display outside the offices of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. (Logan Praznik/The Quill)
A student from Brandon University earned 2nd place among 74 post-secondary computer science students across Manitoba competing in last Saturday’s 11th annual Manitoba Programming Contest, a demonstration of knowledge and skill in computer programming.
Out of the five Brandon University students competing in the contest from BU’s satellite site for the competition, repeat competitors Logan Praznik, Jason Klimack and Andrii Hrytsenko earned 2nd, 16th and 25th place, respectively, while newcomers Thomas Humphries and Matthew Major scored 24th and 35th.
All of the contest’s lightbulb awards, however, were awarded to students from the University of Manitoba. Malcolm Mergulhao took home the Yellow Bulb for the best overall competitor, Sean Egan won the Green Bulb for the first competitor to solve any problem, Garrett Suss earned the Red Bulb for the first competitor to solve the hardest problem, and Ishan Chopra won the White Bulb for best competing first- or second-year student.
As in most other contests of the sort, competitors in the Manitoba Programming Contest are presented with a series of generalized mathematical and logical problems varying widely in difficulty, which must be solved by writing programs while under a time limit.
Competitors are scored primarily on the number of problems solved before the time limit, but also on the time taken to submit each program, with penalties for submitting programs that produce incorrect results or take too long to run.
A team of three of Brandon University’s competitors will advance to the Association for Computing Machinery’s North Central North America Regional Programming Contest on October 28th, where they will compete against other teams in Manitoba, Northwestern Ontario and the American Midwest.
Top-performing teams from that competition, in turn, will advance to next year’s ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, which will take place at Peking University in Beijing, China from April 15th to April 20th.