Programming olympics

The largest international student team programming olympiad is ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest . The general sponsors of the championship are companies such as Microsoft and IBM . In 2004, 3150 teams from 75 countries participated in it.

Teams from Russia repeatedly won the prestigious competition ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]} . As a result of successful performances, the teams were awarded meetings with the President of the Russian Federation ^{[6] [7] [8]} . One of the trainers and organizers of these Olympiads in Russia was awarded the Prizes of the President of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Russian Federation in the field of education ^[9] .

Among schoolchildren

The first programming olympiad in the USSR (called the informatics olympiad) was held among schoolchildren and was held in 1988 in Sverdlovsk ^[10] . Subsequently, computer science Olympiads became part of the All-Union (and after the collapse of the USSR - All-Russian) subject Olympiads for schoolchildren. The All-Russian Olympiad of schoolchildren in computer science 2011 was held in Perm.

Traditionally, school olympiads are personal competitions, held according to a multi-level system, in several stages: district, city, regional, national olympiads. Winners of the All-Russian Olympiad get the right to participate in international Olympiads in computer science .

High results shown at olympiads can give some privileges when entering a university .

Schoolchildren Team Competition

Also, multilevel team Olympiads are held among schoolchildren, according to the rules similar to the rules of international student olympiads ^{[11] [12]} .

The most famous team olympiad is the All-Russian team school olympiad for programming ^[13] (VKOSHP). It is usually held in early December in different cities of Russia: St. Petersburg, Barnaul and cities in other countries. You need to qualify for this Olympiad in your region, 10-20 teams usually go from Moscow, a little less from St. Petersburg ^[14] .

Students

Olympiads in computer science among students of the USSR throughout the country were not held. Since 1996, students of Russian universities began to participate in the competitions included in the system of the world team programming championship among students , held by the American association ACM .

Also, enthusiasts organized various internal and intercollegiate olympiads. Typically, these olympiads are funded by a software company that is interested in attracting talented students to work for themselves.

School Olympics

In Belarus, the Olympiad in programming (computer science) among schoolchildren takes place in several stages.

The first stage is the in-school olympiad. It is held among students of a particular educational institution. As a result of the competition, the winners go to the next stage. To conduct such olympiads testing systems (tournament systems) are used. The organizers of the Olympiad decide which system to use. For example, in Brest, the Brain Training system is used, in some institutions the eJudge system is used.

The second stage is the municipal olympiad (sometimes it is called urban). Such an Olympiad is held among the winners of the previous stage, presented by each school in a certain district of the city. For example, in Brest, two regional olympiads are held: for the Moscow and Leninsky districts. Winners from each district go to the next stage. Mandatory conditions for continued participation in the Olympiad (transition to the next stage) are to score more than 50% of the possible points (this rule was canceled in the 2014-2015 academic year).

The third stage is the regional Olympiad. Here the winners of the previous stage (district olympiad) take part. All Belarus is divided into 6 regions (Brest, Vitebsk, Mogilev, Grodno, Gomel and Minsk), as well as the city of Minsk. In addition, the State Lyceum of the Belarusian State University acts as a separate team. In each of them, participants are selected for the next stage of the Olympiad.

The fourth stage is the Republican Olympiad (final stage). Winners of regional olympiads compete for the title of best programmer among schoolchildren.

The best participants in the Republican Olympiad (usually only from grades 9-11) are selected for training in preparation for the international Olympiad in computer science. During the training camp, the final team is selected from them.

Recently, a more general term “ sports programming ” has appeared. Competitions in sports programming are not directly related to the education system, that is, professional programmers also take part in them. A popular competition in sports programming in the world is the TopCoder resource, which regularly holds rounds (SRM), according to the results of which a rating of participants is formed, as well as the annual TopCoder Open . The Russian resource Codeforces, which appeared later, also holds regular rounds, the results of which also form its own rating.

Large IT companies hold regular and usually personal programming competitions, including Google Code Jam , Facebook Hacker Cup , Russian Code Cup .

At the classical programming Olympiads, participants are offered a certain set of tasks of various difficulty levels. The solution to the problem is a program written in one of the acceptable programming languages. This program should correctly read any input data of the specified format from a specific input stream , correctly process them according to the condition of the task, and output it to a specific output stream in the specified form. Both standard console streams and file streams can be used for input-output (often the input file is named “ input.txt ” and the output is “ output.txt ”).

All decisions are checked by an automated testing system . She runs each solution on a set of tests . After the program is completed, it evaluates the correctness of the obtained output data - compares it with the reference or performs more complex actions.

A feature of the olympiad problems is the artistry of their conditions. Under conditions, it is rarely a question of data structures and algorithms leading to a solution. More often, the task condition is a short story with its plot , heroes and conflict. Thus, in order to solve the olympiad problem, it is necessary to first compile a mathematical model of events, and already select or construct a suitable algorithm from it. The algorithm can be either one of the already known algorithms, or a completely new one, unlike the others.

An example of the classic simplest task often used for a test tour: A + B.