zweben@CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Stu Zweben) (03/12/91)
The entrants in the ACM scholastic programming contest are determined as a result of a tournament that includes regional contests in each of ACM's 12 regions. Carnegie-Mellon competed in its regional contest (East Central) but didn't finish in the top 2 in the region, and therefore didn't receive a position in the finals in San Antonio. CMU has, in the past, been more successful in the region. For information about the other regional contests, you might contact your ACM regional representative, or Bill Poucher (poucher@baylor.bitnet), who is the Scholastic Programming Contest director. Stu
spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) (03/16/91)
Many good schools were not represented in the programming contest. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Some schools can't get enough interest by qualified people to put a team together and go through the various steps of competition. Others get eliminated in the regionals. The team that wins the Programming contest has done something significant, but it isn't clear exactly what. The contests are graded on speed and accuracy over a limited test set. No grades are given for design, reuse, maintainability, security, safety, style, scalability, efficiency, or any of the other properties we generally seek to teach in a rigorous curriculum. Neither are they problems of substantial size or scope. Thus, we have a contest that tests a very narrow range of skills by a small groups of students. It is clearly not representative of the school in general, for good or bad. (Some people view success in the programming contest as an indication that the school emphasizes the wrong skills>) Still, that isn't to take away from the effort and talent that is displayed. The students work hard, and should be proud of what they accomplished. It's just that no one should try to generalize those results to anything else. -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu phone: (317) 494-7825
mcn@mimas.UUCP (Michael C. Neuman) (03/17/91)
I don't suppose anyone would have any of the questions that were asked during the programming contest? If so, please Email them to me, and I'll forward a copy to anyone who asks (unless there's enough interest, in which case, just post it to the net) :-) <<<===========================--------==============================>>> <<< Mike Neuman || Senior Systems Programmer >>> <<< mimas!mcn@bbx.basis.com || Albuquerque Academy >>> <<< mcn@beta.lanl.gov || Computer Science Division >>> <<<===========================--------==============================>>> "It's hard to work in a group when you're omnipotent" - Q ST:TNG "Counsel will refrain from making opposing advocate disappear" - Data