Wearing their medals at the April competition

Tracy (Garfield ’10) and George (Garfield ’12) placed second at the University of Washington high school programming contest not once but twice in the 2009-2010 school year!  They both completed Creative Computing in fall of 2009 and competed in the Python programming language.

Why did you choose to go to the programming competitions?

Tracy: Ms. Martin suggested I go and said it was fun. She gave us some practice problems in class, and they seemed fairly interesting so I decided to go. Once I got there I had so much fun that no persuasion was needed to get me to go to the spring competition.

George:

How would you describe the competitions for someone who has never been?

Tracy: It is a fun out of school opportunity to try programming a variety of different things, while under a slight time limit. The time limit means you have to prioritize and work efficiently, but it’s not so stressful that things stop becoming fun. In the morning there is usually some sort participatory of talk or demonstration about an area of computer science. The programming prompts are usually formatted as a data file that you have to read, make changes to the info inside, and then print a result. You also have plenty of opportunities during the day to meet and talk with other students and teachers from around the area.

George:

What do you think contributed most to your competition success?

Tracy: George and I worked out a good strategy of alternating between sketching out the basics of a program on paper, and actually typing it into the computer and debugging.  We were able to communicate well, and we knew our own strengths and weaknesses.  Between these we could figure out whether it was worth it to tackle a problem, let the other person do it, or leave alone.

George:

What advice would you give to others looking to participate in programming competitions?

Tracy: A two person team is the best size. Alone means you can’t bounce ideas off of someone when you get stuck debugging, and a three person team produces more ideas than you can get in to the computer in time. Don’t expect you’re going to be able to figure out all the programs in the competition time, so don’t worry if you have no idea how to solve some of them. And just have fun – don’t get too stressed out if you’re running out of time.

George:

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