ACM(HK) Local Programming Contest 2004

Local Contest Champion

Tang Jiqing (IEEM MPhil), Leung Tsz Kin (CS Year 2), Wong Long Sing (CPEG Year1)

Competition Against the Clock, A Challenge for Creativity, Teamwork, and Innovation!

Tang Jiqing (IEEM MPhil), Leung Tsz Kin (CS Year 2), Wong Long Sing (CPEG Year1) has won the championship of the ACM(HK) Local Programming Contest 2004 which was held on June 12, 2004 at the Oen Hall Building East Wing (OEE) of the Hong Kong Baptist University. HKUST has sent 3 teams to join the competition, and Prof. C K Tang is the coach the teams.

The winning team has used 733 minutes to answer the six questions, just wins by 2 minutes to the first runner-up of the competition from The University of Hong Kong. This is the second time for HKUST to gain champion of the competition, last time was 1992. They will join the Asia Regional Contest which will be held in Ehime, Beijing, Bombay, Kanpu-Kolkata, Dhaka, Shanghai, Manila, Seoul and Tehran, to pursue further championship.

Twenty four teams have been invited from the eight tertiary institutes in Hong Kong and Macau: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The City University of Hong Kong, The Lingnan University, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, The University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Baptist University, and The University of Macau. Each department of a participating institution can nominate up to three teams to take part in the contest. Teams will then be selected by the CPC organizing committee according to the priorities indicated by the individual department, making sure that the participating teams will be evenly distributed among the departments, with no single institution sending more than three teams.

Founded in 1970, the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) has been regarded as an innovative initiative to assist in the development of top students in the emerging field of computer science. The contest has been based at Baylor University since the 1980s, with IBM’s sponsorship beginning 1997. Up to now, more than 10,000 participants of the contest are coming from over 1,300 universities from 68 countries on six continents. Within the limited time, participants are being challenged for their creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs.

The format of the contest pits teams of three programmers competing against the clock. The software used for development is scheduled to be based on Microsoft Windows 2000 with VC++ or Java. Each team is given six programming problems. They then try to write programs to solve as many of these problems as possible in the allotted time (scheduled to be four hours). The team that correctly solves the most problems wins. If multiple teams solve the same number of problems, the team that solved them fastest wins. Expertise in quick-and-dirty hacking is usually more valuable than rigid software engineering techniques in such an environment. Experience with debugging stupid mistakes is also a plus.

The contest is comprised of 4 levels of competitions:

Local contests:
Intra-university contest for selection of one or more teams to represent the universities at the next level of competition.
Preliminary contests:
Multi-university preliminary contests that advance teams to Regional contests.
Regional contests:
a total of 31 regional contests are held for teams around the world to compete for the opportunities for world finals.
Worlds final:
72 winners of the regional contests will compete in the World Finals which will be held in Shanghai.

News Reports of the Event:

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