Team programming contest

Thanks to the record-breaking interest in team programming contests, 20 teams of 3-4 students entered the mini contest held at the Computer Science Department at UCT on Thursday May 7. They were tasked to solve as many problems as possible in the 1 hour and 1 PC/team available to them. It was a friendly contest, where students practiced for the upcoming Standard Bank IT Challenge contest, applied content they just learned in class, and had fun.

The first prize was won by the team “asyncabacus”, consisting of the CS Honours students Jarred de Beer, Leonard Botha, Steven Rybicki, and Nicole Petersen, earning the honour and a 8GB flash drive for each team member. Second prize (and 4GB flash drives) went to the “#!Map Filter Reduce” team, consisting of 2nd-year CS/Maths students Guy Paterson-Jones, Tashiv Sewpersad and Sinead Urison, and the third prize (with a UCT mug) went to the “Brogrammers”, composed of Ngoni Choga, Mitch Myburgh, Paul Mwangi, and Ntokozo Zwane. The difference between 4th and 5th place—“Some Boastful Internet Trolls Code” and “This Was Easier Last Year”—was a mere 5 seconds.

Depending on space, the top 15-20 teams will participate in the IT Challenge heats on May 16, of which the winning UCT team will represent UCT at the IT Challenge finals in August 2015, competing against the winners of 8 other South African universities.