Programming contests for university students

 Nikolay Kirov Kirov

    Programming contests for university students is an activity of a group of university lecturers that provides university students with an opportunity to demonstrate and sharpen their  problem solving and computing skills. Our ambition is to involve all the students with good results in informatics and programming from Bulgarian universities.

List of Bulgarian universities with essential teaching in programming

State universities:
Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski"
University of Plovdiv "Paisii Hilendarski"
South-West University "Neofit Rilski"
St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Turnovo
Shumen University "Konstantin Preslavsky"

Technical state universities:
Technical University of Sofia
Technical University of Gabrovo
Technical University of Varna

Economics state universities:
University of National and World Economy
Varna  University of Economics

Other universities:
American University in Bulgaria
New Bulgarian University
Burgas Free University
Varna Free University "Chernorizets Hrabar"

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest
organized by Association for Computing  Machinery (ACM), sponsored by IBM

Rules for ACM contests.
Basic rules:
Each team consists of three contestants.
Each team will use a single computer.
The programming language are Java, C++, C, and Pascal.
Contestants may bring resource materials such as books, manuals, and program listings. Contestants may not  bring any machine-readable versions of software or data.
Solutions to problems submitted for judging are called runs. Each run is judged as accepted or rejected by a  judge, and the team is notified of the results.
Teams are ranked according to the most problems solved.

Interuniversity programming contest
March 24, 2002
Organized by BURGAS FREE UNIVERSITY
Statistics:
- 9 Bulgarian universities
- 13 teams
- 5 problems for 4 hours

Fifth national interuniversity programming tournament
May 19, 2002, Host in BURGAS FREE UNIVERSITY
Statistics:
- 10 Bulgarian universities
- 20 teams
- 8 problems for 5 hours

Basic courses in programming:
Introduction in programming - I semester 
Programming and data structures - II semester 
Object-oriented programming - III semester 

Special courses:
Programming and analysis of algorithms (BFU) 
Advanced programming (NBU and SWU) 

Internet based training: 
Coach publish a problems
Student write a program and send source code by e-mail
Coach test the code, replay by some standard answers and publish the replay
If the answer is not ACCEPTED, the student can correct source code and send again
After few attempts the couch replay an e-mail with comments and suggestions

Internal university contests:
Two or three times in term we organize internal contests with participation of 5-6 teams.

We plan to organize at least 3 contests in 2003:

International regional contest
Date: February
Place: Blagoevgrad, host SWU
Potential participants:
  South-West University "Neofit Rilski" - Blagoevgrad
  American University in Bulgaria - Blagoevgrad
  Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski"
  New Bulgarian University - Sofia
  University of Nis
  Ss. Cyril and Methodious University - Skopje
  Institute of Informatics PMF Skopje
  Technical University of Crete
  Aristotle University - Thessaloniki

Second interuniversity programming contest
Date: March
Place: Burgas, Burgas Free University
Potential participants: Bulgarian Universities

Sixth national interuniversity programming tournament
Date: May
Place: Shumen, host Shumen University "Konstantin Preslavsky"
Potential participants: Bulgarian Universities

 Nikolay Kirov Kirov
 Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
 E-mail:  nkirov@math.bas.bg

Abstract:
Programming contests for university students is an activity of a group of university lecturers that provides university students with an opportunity to demonstrate and sharpen their  problem-solving and computing skills. Two main topic are discussed - training advanced students in programming and
programming contests for university students held this year in Bulgaria.