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29th ACM Intl. Programming Contest Results
mathinator writes "The 29th ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals, hosted by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University, are now over and the results are in.
Congratulations to the top 4 teams who will be walking away with gold medals. They are Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Moscow State University, St. Petersburg Institute of Optics and Mechanics, and Canada's University of Waterloo (coming in at 1, 2, 3, 4 respectively. The top 4 get gold medals).
Regional champions are: University of Waterloo, Canada (North America); Moscow State University, Russia (Europe); University of Cape Town, South Africa, (Africa and the Middle East); Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica, Brazil (Latin America); Shanghai Jiaotong University, China (Asia); and University of New South Wales, Australia (South Pacific)."
You shouldn't judge programmers of CS curricula based on these competitions. The problems are all very academic in nature rather than practical (I've competed in the ACM for two years now). Also, some schools spend all year preparing for the competition, offering classes in it, whereas other schools don't put quite that much into it.
Furthermore, the results of a single competition is hardly any reason to pass judgement on CS students nationwide.
This doesn't really mean anything by itself. However, it's worth mentioning that the individual attitude is different in the rest of the world than it is in the U.S. (For example, the students at the Shanghai U. might be a bit more motivated to prove their talents than the students in the U.S. thanks to some social doctrines going around in the region).
So well let's assume this is a fair test of programming skill, why is it that an Islamic state's team, Sharif University of Technology, beat out not only the top technical university of India (IIT) but all of the US's Ivy League schools -- not just MIT and CalTech?
Hmm, maybe they solved more problems in less time.
(The above is of course just a theory. It could be a global conspiracy against America).
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Mediocre programming is perhaps a labour job but I would take one brilliant programmer over five mediocre ones.
let's assume this is a fair test of programming skill, why is it that an Islamic state's team, Sharif University of Technology, beat out not only the top technical university of India (IIT) but all of the US's Ivy League schools -- not just MIT and CalTech
I sure hope I misunderstood you there: do you mean to suggest that "a fair test of programming skill" could not possibly have a winner from an Islamic state? Just so we're clear on this, I don't know whether this competition is fair or not (other posters seem to think not) but why would religion have anything to do with it?
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
One reason I can think of is because they really are better now. Don't forget, there hasn't been any good reason to study computer science in the US for a while now, unless you _enjoy_ flipping burgers of course. On the other hand, the countries to which all that work is outsourced have a strong need to produce more and more competent programmers. The result is a loss of competence in the US, in favor of those other countries.
Not really. I was an assistant coach for my school's team in 1998 and had a long discussion with the department chair about this.
Basically, with the rules that are in place from the school and the board of regents for the state colleges, there isn't a lot of incentives that can be given to students to participate in something like this. I talked with a member of the Waterloo team and they were getting a couple of class credits for being on the team, which is something our school couldn't give. It wasn't considered appropriate - should we then give credits to someone in athletic studies for being a member of a school athletic team? Another issue (back in 1998) was that most US students didn't need the line on their resume, or the job offer from IBM if they won the contest. (Note: The job offer from IBM to the winning team was anecdotal, but IBM seemed interested in talking to everyone there about job opportunities.) Also, the "good students" don't participate in these contests since most of them have some sort of programming job on the side. I talked to several people about being on the team and they told me they would rather go to work and make US$20-30/hr being a part-time programmer than practicing for a contest.
Just my US$0.02
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
If programming is like coal mining, can you do a PhD in Coal Mining too?
You, sir, seem to misunderstand what programming is about. Programming is not jotting down some if statements, for loops and the like - any 9 year old can do that after having reading a bit through Learn C++ in 21 days and in the development cycle of a program, it is probably the least time-intensive part.
But defining the problem you're tackling, designing your solution, your strategy, your algorithms, indeed the program itself (and yes, this includes the OO Paradigm - you don't seriously think the OO Paradigm is a funky thing where everything just works automagically with zip effort?) takes up at least half the total development time and it is not "some mental challenge with most part labour", it is purely a mental challenge. The most important tools of a programmer are a pencil and (lots of) paper. After the design is finished, you spend another significant amount of time deciding how to best implement your design. And yes, all of this is important and this is what they teach CS students at universities - or did you think it was all about different ways of writing a while loop? The better your design, the less time you will spend debugging your program (another substantial part of the development cycle of a program and another purely mental task once you've ironed out the compiler errors due to typos).
So don't diss it till you've done it - you clearly haven't.
I know several people who have been to ACM world finals. Among them are one of the most irreplacable programmers for the company that I work for, and several programmers at a company down the road that has a very popular search engine. I don't know about you, but that search engine company is probably the *most* respectable job in the realm of computer science.
So they didn't place.
Now all I see is people saying: "The Contest isn't representative", "The Metrics are poor", "The problems are academic", and "I wouldn't judge the state of CS curricula based on a contest"
That's all find and good - as long as you sleep better tonight.
But you still didn't place.
I'm American, and love my country, but we have to face facts. U.S. society doesn't place a lot of value on academic knowledge, compared to the rest of the world. Our cultural heroes aren't scientists, academics, and thinkers -- they are entertainers and athletes. We respect practicality, and making money, not intellectual understanding. Our society has a longstanding democratic suspicion of elites, including intellectual elites, which often shows up as a disdain for 'impractical' academics. There are several examples of this cultural disdain in the responses to this topic (taking the form of, "who cares, it has no relevance to the practical realm of real-world programming/software engineering."
You can argue about whether or not this disdain for intellectual mastery is good, but the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world where the theory of evolution isn't widely accepted. Perhaps our culture's disdain for and mistrust of elites has a real price, and this contest is one place it shows up? Perhaps it also encourages many of the brightest students to go into areas where they can make money -- law, medical, or business school -- rather than academia?