From roland at rolandturner.com Mon Jun 4 10:29:28 2018 From: roland at rolandturner.com (Roland Turner) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2018 08:29:28 +0800 Subject: [ProgSoc] GDPR for Star Wars fans Message-ID: <68b59949-9cb5-2531-9c33-d7c764993501@rolandturner.com> An absurd parallel wandered into my mind: > I felt a great disturbance in the Internet, as if millions of > non-consensual direct-marketing lists suddenly cried out in terror and > were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened. - Obi-Spam Kenobi, May 26, 2018. - Raz From tomchristmas at progsoc.org Thu Jun 21 22:09:23 2018 From: tomchristmas at progsoc.org (Tomislav Bozic) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2018 22:09:23 +1000 Subject: [ProgSoc] Call for problem writers for UTS Programming Competition 2018 Message-ID: <5046f0c8-f5b0-3fa9-e514-44458864d33a@progsoc.org> Hello ProgSoc pplz, In case you hadn't noticed, we didn't have a programming competition last year :O But no matter, because in 2018 (i.e. the year in which this email was written), we are going to have our sixth edition -- yay! The plan is to hold it in a few months time, some time in the middle of next sem^H^H^Htrimester (date to be announced very soon). But we are doing it for realz, I promise! A ProgComp's not a ProgComp without questions to solve and while I probably could write all the questions myself, I don't particularly want to. So... I would definitely love some assistance with the process, so if you've got any ideas for questions, or perhaps you'd like to write a question or two, let me know. ---- To give you an idea of what I'm after, here are all the problem sets from previous years: http://progsoc.org/wiki/UTS_Programming_Competition_2012_Problem_Set http://progsoc.org/wiki/UTS_Programming_Competition_2013_Problem_Set http://progsoc.org/wiki/UTS_Programming_Competition_2014_Problem_Set http://progsoc.org/wiki/UTS_Programming_Competition_2015_Problem_Set http://progsoc.org/wiki/UTS_Programming_Competition_2016_Problem_Set As you can see there are eight problems in each set. I can't see why this year should be any different. As a rough guide, we should have four 'easy' problems and four 'hard' problems. It's OK if we end up with a surplus of problem submissions. In fact it'd be pretty cool if we did. Means less work for next year ;) We haven't yet had a surplus, though. As in previous years, contestants will have four hours to solve as many of the eight problems as they can. Basically, we are after: 1. A problem description/definition. 2. Sample input for testing, and the corresponding test output; typically short, straightforward instances of the problem, to help guide the problem solver. These will be seen by the contestants. 3. Actual test input and the corresponding output for judging, (typically longer instances of the problem, often containing corner cases) in separate text files. These files are used by our adjudication software (DOMJudge) to test contestants' solutions and will not be seen by contestants before or during the contest. (3a. Optional - input verifying scripts to check that your input data conforms with your input format specification. It can be just a bunch of regexes in a simple script. You can execute your script from the shell prompt, of course, but DOMJudge can in fact be configured to execute your verifiers when you attempt to upload your test data into the judging system and reject test input that does not conform. I can supply you with examples of input verifiers should you choose to be a problem writer. Highly recommended.) 4. A working solution in C++ or Java, as a proof-of-concept and to assist with working out typical run times for contestants' own solutions to your problem. Your solution can also be used to assist with generating test data. We are looking for original problems, but twists on existing problems are perfectly acceptable. For example, many competition problems can be reduced to minor variations of the travelling salesman or bin packing problems or any classic problem in the computer science literature. No unsolved or current research problems please! Note that if you contribute a problem to the contest and it ends up being used, you are unable to participate as a contestant, although you are more than welcome to (and, in fact, you should if possible) assist with the judging of the contest. ---- Thanks a 10^100, Tom (Graduated in 2016, Gainfully Employed, Yet Still Running ProgComps, WTAF?) ----------------------------------------------------- To judiciously use split infinitives is fine by me...