NCPC Practice Workshop
Friday, 13:15 -- 17:00, at set dates.
We will hold a practice programming contest in a format similar to the NCPC.
Instructions
🏃 Be quick, the contest starts soon at 13:37 sharp ⏱️...
- 🕐 Arrive at 13:15 at the latest, bring a laptop computer
- 👥 Form a team of three (3).
- 🏝️ Sit together on an island.
- 👤 Create users on open.kattis.com, ideally one for each team member.
- 🎈 Decide on a team name. (If out of ideas, use initials "ABC".)
- 💬 Tell Rudy your team name and usernames to register.
- ✅ Accept the invitation on open.kattis.com.
- ⏱️ Sit and wait:
- 🤝 you can help others register in the meanwhile;
- 🐝 you can solve open.kattis.com/problems/fizzbuzz as a warmup.
- 📃 you can read the rules in jukod.github.io/workshop
⏳ We cannot add teams once the contest has started, be quick 🎯.
Agenda
| time | Topic |
|---|---|
| 13:15 | 👥 Team registration & setup (see instructions) |
| 13:25 | 📃 Quick intro presentation |
| 13:30 | ⏳ Last-minute registrations |
| 13:37 | 🎈 Actual NCPC Practice Contest |
| 16:50 | 🏆 Announcing results & wrap-up |
| 17:00 | ✅ The end |
Format & Rules
In short: Teams of up to three persons try to solve as many programming problems as possible, without external help.
Format
The NCPC format:
- 👥 teams of 3 university students
- ⏱️ 5 hours
- 🚩 ≈ 10 programming problems
- ⌨️ solutions in: Python, C, Java, C#, C++, Haskell or 40 other languages.
- 💻 1 computer per team
- 🎈 the team with most problems solved wins
Problems usually involve standard IO in the command line:
- read from the keyboard and
- write to the screen.
Rules
These are the NCPC rules.
Equipment:
- 1 computer per team with 1 keyboard, 1 mouse and 1 screen;
- no other electronic devices such as mobile phones;
- printed material is allowed (e.g.: books).
What you may and may not use:
- You may NOT use the internet for anything other than accessing the contest page and documentation.
- You may NOT use a program using generative AI, such as Github Copilot or ChatGPT.
- You may use prewritten code, and other software available on your computer that doesn’t break the previous two rules.
- You may NOT communicate with anyone other than the contest organizers and your own team members.
For instance:
If you are using VS Code, please remember to disable Copilot or any extensions with Generative AI.
Additional rules
The above rules are a copy of NCPC's rules. In the practice workshop we have the following additional rules:
- 🎓 Tutoring. Help from lecturers will be provided then.
- ♻️ No solution re-use. If the contest has a problem that you have solved already in previous practice, you need to re-solve it from scratch, preferably with a different team "driver" at the keyboard.
- 🕐 Arrive in time! 13:15
- 🛑 People arriving after 13:15 may not be allowed in
- ⛔ People arriving after 13:30 will not be allowed in
Tips
-
Problems are not ordered by difficulty.
-
Start with what's easiest as earlier submission times are tiebreakers.
- quickly skim through all problems at first
- use the live scoreboard to find easier problems
Other info
Full capacity: 18 teams, 54 students
Optimal: 9 teams, 27 students
Total contest time: 3h 13m 37s starting at 13:37