Students, alumni, and representatives from local IT and technology businesses competed in the Karlstad Programming Contest on 5 October. After the contest, team Bug Repellent, consisting of Dan Wolff, Klara Jonsson, and Sigrid Österling Sicking (all of them from Altran), were pronounced winners after having solved five tasks.
For a third time since the contest was initiated in 2012, Dan Wolff was a member of the winning team.
“It seems as though my strategy works, that is to find and solve the easiest tasks first and not get stuck for too long trying to solve any one task,” says Dan Wolff.
“This type of problem-solving is great fun, and the fact that it is a competition makes it a special challenge, everyone tries a bit harder. In addition, the contest is a great opportunity to meet other people who like programming. Even though we compete against each other, it feels as though we are competing together.”
Eleven programming tasks
15 teams with a maximum of three members in each team received eleven programming tasks of varying difficulty to solve in five hours. They were allowed to use a computer, texts, and their own knowledge to be able to do so.
“Interest in this contest increases each year,” says Jonathan Vestin, contest director and a lecturer in Computer Science at Karlstad University. “Last year, there were ten competing teams compared to 15 this year. Many contestants have taken part before, and that is a good sign indicating that the level of the tasks and the setup is just right.”
Second place with four solved tasks went to team Falukorv, consisting of Adam Hellberg, Tim Hemdal, and Samuel Häggmyr. Third place with four solved tasks went to team The Senate, consisting of Onur Jadermark.
The Karlstad Programming Contest is part of the larger competition Nordic Collegiate Programming Contest (NCPC), which took place in parallel at 16 Nordic universities and university colleges.
More information
More information about the contest including problem descriptions, solutions, and more can be found here.
