Juilfs Programming Competition

In spring term of 2009, the CIS Department held the First Annual Juilfs Programming Competition. The purpose of the competition is to encourage interest in Computer Science among CIS majors, potential majors, and other students interested in problem solving and programming. This contest is open to UO students who have taken 100-level or 200-level CIS courses, but have not yet started any 300-level CIS courses. During this activity, students have the opportunity to exercise their problem solving knowledge and programming skills in a fun and challenging environment.

The contest takes the form of a competition among teams to see which team can produce working programs to solve the most problems of varying difficulty levels. Teams consist of two students, writing programs in languages they have learned in the lower division courses. The winning team is the recipient of the Juilfs Award and the members' names will be inscribed on a plaque on display at the CIS Department. All students participating in the competition will receive a CIS Department T-shirt. The competition is a fun challenge of programming skills and teamwork, and can be good preparation for the Annual UO Programming Competition, also coordinated by the CIS Department.

For the contest, teams are given several problems to solve within three hours. Solutions to the problems are programs that accept the input described in the problem statement and produce the output specified. Solving a problem will earn a specified number of points, based on the difficulty of the problem. The team that earns the most points wins the contest, with ties being broken by having the least amount of time accumulated to submit working solutions. Each team will use just one computer to work on the problems. For more details, see the contest rules.

The First Annual Juilfs Programming Competition was was held on Saturday, May 30, 2009. Five teams competed and the top two teams each solved three of the seven problems:

• First Place: Charlie La Mothe and Jake Potter
• Second Place: Austin Lally and Ned Peters

Jim Allen and David Atkins organized the contest and also served as judges. Undergraduate CIS majors Drew Bruce, Jed Clinger, Trevor Dilley, and Jimmy Hastings served as contest hosts/helpers and also designed problems for the contest.

We are grateful for John Juilfs' ongoing support of the CIS Department.

Problems and pictures from the contests