Internet Problem Solving Contest 2004 101
misof writes "The sixth year of the annual Internet Problem Solving Contest (IPSC) will take place on Friday May 21st. IPSC is one of world's largest online programming contests with over 600 teams from more than 50 countries participating last year. The main purpose of IPSC is to compare problem solving skills of people from around the world and, of course, to have fun.
IPSC is not oriented on a specific programming language instead you are given the input data and may produce the output data by any means. (This could actually be THE way to show your friends the superiority of both your skills and your favourite programming environment!) The contest is open for everybody and we invite you to participate!"
All the smartest people... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:All the smartest people... (Score:1)
Re:All the smartest people... (Score:1)
Re:All the smartest people... (Score:1)
Re:All the smartest people... (Score:1)
I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I wonder (Score:1)
I could be wrong, though...
Time of Day (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Time of Day (Score:1)
Re:Time of Day (Score:2)
Re:Time of Day (Score:2)
Re:No posts (Score:1)
T-Shirt? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:T-Shirt? (Score:2, Funny)
convergant or divergent solutions (Score:5, Interesting)
Thinking in my own field of engineering, if you gave people problems to solve outside of the work environment you would probably get a far more creative set of solutions than you would if people were set the same problem at work in the context of a project.
similar means, similar solutions (Score:5, Interesting)
What strikes me in this contest is that it's not problem solving that is asked for, but "thinking in a procedural or object-oriented way".
Contrary to the original post, I CANNOT use my "favorite" development environment. My favorite environment is the one that suits the task, and for many tasks, I prefer to use Prolog. The fact that they exclude logic formlisms and also the Internet as today's vital research medium means that this is not about solving novel (and hard) problems, but more about the old compare high school student's skills when given a well-known problem in a very restricted environment.
Re:convergant or divergent solutions (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at the sample set of problems the tiling problem and the dependancy problem should be able to be solved optimally (in terms of time complexity) fairly easily since they are both simplifications of well known problems in CS.
The smiley face problem is quite interesting and i agree that this one could expose some really good creatinve thinking.
All in all based on the sample problems I think this competition would be ideally suited to strong computer science students or recent graduates. Most people in the work place have totally forgotten all of the necesary kind of skills since in the real world they don't work quite so well
To be honest it makes a change to have a situation that favours students over those with experience in the industry. Slashdot all too often slams graduates fresh out of uni simply because they make mistakes due to lack of experience in the field.
that's because (Score:2)
I write all kinds of weird things at home, some work, some don't, and some get shelfed for a couple of years.Unfortunatly? where I work I have to produce a useable product in a time-frame, so a reasonable predictable development model is needed.
Whitespace Language (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whitespace Language (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Whitespace Language (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Whitespace Language (Score:2, Funny)
LK
Re:Whitespace Language (Score:1)
Got Root? (Score:2, Funny)
Prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
I won't participate since I have work to do.
Re:Prediction (Score:3, Funny)
Does it still count as a win for the country the team registered from if they outsource the actual work to India?
suck rules (Score:5, Interesting)
From http://ipsc.ksp.sk/rules.php
Each team may use only one computer or one terminal (one keyboard and one monitor).
You can't have a distributed team working through the internet.
It is forbidden to use systems for symbolic computation (e.g. Mathematica, Maple, Matlab) and special libraries (e.g. LEDA).
Most of the programming languages listed (Pascal, C, C++, Java, Basic, Smalltalk, Lisp, Logo, Perl, Python) have symbolic libraries, but it looks like you can't use those and'll have to reinvent those wheels. Hmmmm.
Re:suck rules (Score:5, Funny)
Re:suck rules (Score:3, Funny)
Re:suck rules (Score:2)
Re:suck rules (Score:2)
Re:suck rules (Score:3, Informative)
Are you supposed to win if you can write the basic datastructures, trees, etc, faster than anyone else?
That's not a very interesting competition then.
Half of the work is to understand the problem. The rest is to tell a computer to do stuff to find the solution. It shouldn't matter how you tell it to do stuff. The point is that you should try to learn as many tools as possible and be allowed to use them.
Re:suck rules (Score:4, Informative)
Re:suck rules (Score:1)
If you know that you should use the XYZ algorithm (==problem solving) then you should use the best XYZ algorithm you know of. If you don't know of any, then you should write one yourself. Unfortunatly, it will take some time, but you will learn a lot by doing so.
If you don't know about the XYZ algorithm, well, you h
Re:suck rules (Score:2)
Incidentally, if you write tens (yes, I know that 54545633 / 532 is larger than that) of getter and setter methods per class, I think you need to study OO a bit more.
Re:suck rules (Score:2, Interesting)
Cool, but.... (Score:4, Funny)
Don't think I could do it...
Not even slashdot??!
SUperior programming language (Score:5, Funny)
All the hours of practice, the computer science degrees, all the long dateless Friday nights coding, I now know they have led up to this contest. Why I can program anything, except for this emotion you call "love."
Glaven (Score:5, Funny)
Friends?
Re:Glaven (Score:1)
with friends like these, who needs enemies?
Re:Glaven (Score:1, Funny)
Friends like Mrs. Sticky? That's what I named my inflatable girlfriend.
Friends like Mr. Winky? He's a one-eyed monster! Arr!
Friends like Ramen? My noodles sometimes talk back to me after I've neglected to eat for a few days.
Don't laugh. I'm being serious. These are my best friends.
Sincerely,
A happy loner in teh parents basement
The most superior coding environment... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The most superior coding environment... (Score:3, Funny)
Shell Scripting, So 70s
LISP, AWK, BASIC (Visual and DOS), Java, Javascript
I will SO join you. Lets show these so-called "real programmers" what some HTML magic can really do!
You know I'm kidding right? right?!
Re:The most superior coding environment... (Score:1)
The team can use any compiler or interpreter (together with standard libraries), which is based on one of the following languages: Pascal, C, C++, Java, Basic, Smalltalk, Lisp, Logo, Perl, Python.
... If you want to use a compiler or interpreter based on language not listed, please, consult it with organizers during the registration process.
We need special permission to use HTML :(
Re:The most superior coding environment... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The most superior coding environment... (Score:2)
Re:The most superior coding environment... (Score:1)
http://home.wxs.nl/~faase009/Ha_BF.html [home.wxs.nl] Now we're talking superior!
Change of plans, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Internet Problem Solving? (Score:3, Funny)
A new IRC protocol (Score:2, Funny)
[14:47] <Animaether> Hello ?
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[14:48] * pdxdada has quit (split: *.undernet.org *.undernet.org)...
will take place on Friday May 21st. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:will take place on Friday May 21st. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the sample problems looked interesting. 1 and 3 wouldn't be too bad. 1 could be solved by a list of packages each with a list of dependancies, and remove dependancies as you find them. Hash table it if you need better speed. After the last package is added to the list, anything with 0 dependancies can be added. To deal with multilayer dependancies, whenever you clear out all dependa
Re:will take place on Friday May 21st. (Score:2, Funny)
Will it be televised? (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe it will be on ESPN9.
This may just be the one thing I was waiting for to justify the expense of expanded cable.
And who should we get to announce the action? I vote for Steve Ballmer (Monkey Boy), that will get the crowd going and cheer on their programming teams.
Re:Will it be televised? (Score:2)
And I was so hoping for Martin Sargent and Laura Swisher to do the hosting as only they could!
Ballmer... that's just sick and wrong.
shouldn't it be.... (Score:1, Funny)
for a moment i thought we had to solve Internet problems
Problem Solving Skills (Score:4, Insightful)
Question.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Question.. (Score:1)
Internet??? (Score:2, Insightful)
And then the team can only use one terminal and not use the internet???
ROFL...
It's all politics (Score:3, Funny)
I bet Al Gor's people are behind this contest
And the prizes? (Score:3, Funny)
First prize is William Shatner records the outgoing message for your answering machine.
I won something like this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone know if this is related? I didn't see any mention of it on the site, maybe it's a coincidence?
Re:I won something like this... (Score:2)
Instead of being given X hours to do Y tasks, you're simply given X hours to find something cool to do with the input data.
It's much more like a let-the-creativity-flow thing then a problem solving contest.
ACM Contest (Score:4, Informative)
problem no 1 - trivial? (Score:1)
Re:problem no 1 - trivial? (Score:2)
(This is a reinventing-the-wheel competition)
Re:problem no 1 - trivial? (Score:1)
Too early to start coding... (Score:2)
Compare around the world? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not exactly fair towards non-English countries.
I also find the no www rule to be kind of bad, only in that it is impossible to enforce.
Re:Compare around the world? (Score:1, Informative)
The unenforcable www rule is derived from a similar ACM ICPC contest. In fact a whole team of fifty PhD. software engineers with three computers each could work in every problem and the IPSC staff wouldn't notice, so it's all about being fair.
Re:Compare around the world? (Score:1)
I guess I'm saying I'm not exactly happy with the fact that it's English only. I understand it's a compromise, but a winner of this competition can't really claim to be best in the world, just best among English speakers or those that can get good (possibly technical) interpreters.
In fact a whole team of fifty PhD. software engineers with three computers each could work in every problem and the IPSC staff wouldn't n
Old school (Score:1)
Uhhh, IPSC stands for... (Score:2)
http://www.ipsc.org
Any practical shooters out there in
Noah Yetter
USPSA# A50113
I once had to turn this into a program... (Score:2, Funny)
IPSC Problem to Solve for 2004 (Score:2, Funny)
We have encoutered problems with delivering registration e-mails to the following teams: Incubation, Shandong Province Team in Informatics 1#, asar, Orenburg SU 2, Runtime Error, KP, GuoXiaoPeng, kutaisi1, TDT, Haaak. You have just probably misspelled your e-mail address when entering it in the registration form. If you do not provide us with a valid e-mail address, we will not be able to deliver you responses of the online judge as well as announcements during the contest. Please
Problem With Computing Time (Score:1)
slashdotted? (Score:1)
Not bad (Score:1)
Hope they continue to do this, but it would be better (for me anyway
contest (Score:1)