The Resource Magazine For Apple, Atari, and Commodore ...

46 COMPUTE! September/October. 198O. Issue 6
THE FIRST
ANNUAL
COMPUTER
PROGRAMMING
CONTEST
(of Herkimer, NY)
E. Q. Carr
Planetarium Director
Herkimer BOCES Planetarium
Herkimer, NY 1335O
They came from 40 miles away. Some brought their
own PET's with large keyboards because they
wanted no part of our little keyboards. The lone Ap
ple II arrived and fortunately we had planned a se
cond one for them. These kids were confident, a big
short of cock\', quite determined and planned to win
a timed problem solving contest. Three-and-a-half
hours later they left, confident, determined to win
the next contest, perhaps in college.
And during that time, the 33 contestants did
warm-up exercises, engaged in a two problem con
test, polished off 90 hamburgers, listened en
thusiastically to lectures on Fortran and a slide
shown on the history of digital computer technology,
received their prizes and visited a miniinicrocomputer
faire set up by local computer vendors. The ac
tual time schedule appears in Table I.
Why Programming Contests
I do not know of research which indicates the mind
increases its power and capacity by competition. It is
obvious however, that a system of proper instruction
and training with competition produces desirable
results. The programs for the athletically apt are a
paradigm worthy of imitating. Athletics produces
very little in the export market to aid in the balance
of payments however. But computer technology and
software has income value to the country in terms of
billions of dollars over a long period of lime.
Moreover, discipline, challenge and association
with peers n a competition is a tool for selfcalibration.
Then, there is the exhilaration of stret
ching to the limit of one's inherent capabilities. In a
contest, the kids grow in stature and self-esteem, and
that's obvious from even a cursory observation.
The practice and training for competition is, of
course, the most valuable part of it all. All the basics
must be in place, techniques studied and reviewed,
some of the simple algorithms FOR-NKX 1' loops,
IF-THEN, logic statements AND, OR. NOT must
be ready tools, used without hesitation.
Organization
The idea of a contest appealed to the experienced
computer teachers in our areas who responded to a
phone call sampling 15 schools known to have
microcomputers, or terminals accessing a mainframe.
A mailing for organization went out three months
before the expected contest date. Six leathers and
two community college students attended that first
meeting. They were the nucleus for sample problems
demonstrating the potential skill of contestants. A
member of this group decided there should be prizes
for the winners and undertook getting contributions.
The college students offered to generate a range of
problems for the contest. The residue of tasks con
sisted of the physical facilities, speakers, publicity,
registration, the mini-fuirc organization, cor
respondence, refreshments, contest rules, judging,
selecting a final date, arranging computers and con
tacting suppliers for literature.
Of course, we had two months for all that.
Registration
With a date selected, a Saturday in April, there was
a hope that there would be no student events in con
flict. It proved an unfortunate choice. We lost a
number of local schools* contestants to a track meet.
Which may demonstrate something about the nature
of a number of kids involved. They are also athletes.
Within a week, all but 2 teams had sent the registra
tion forms, and the final pre-eontest registration was
32 students.
Sudden
Death
The committee agreed that contestants would be paired
as teams. There were several reasons, bul fundamen
tally, the purpose was to assure that the maximum