Sunny days, long beaches and palm trees are typical components of a tropic vacation. But for three Duke students at the world finals of a programming competition, computers are also part of the tropics.
The contest, sponsored by the Association for Computer Machinery, condenses a college semester's worth of programming into one afternoon. Each three-person team of competitors is given a computer and six hours to solve eight problems.
"The contest not only tests how fast they can program, but it also tests how quickly they can think," said Owen Astrachan, Duke team coach and professor of the practice of computer science. "The problems are designed in such a way that they can't see right away how to solve them. Your brain has to see it and think, OOh, this is how it is.'"
The competition will take place Saturday and feature seniors Andrew Chatham and Kevin Lacker and sophomore David Arthur. It is designed to test logic, strategy and mental endurance. Under the scrutiny of judges, teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of problems, determine the requirements, design test beds and build software programs that solve the problems.
Astrachan teaches a half-credit seminar course, CPS 149S, that helps students prepare for the competition. Since he started teaching it in 1995, Duke teams have done fairly well, he said.
"Students who take the course are serious about the competition because there is a fair amount of work involved," he said. "In the course, I can teach them to program fast, but I can't teach them to think fast.
I can't even do that. The students on our team are really smart and can see things that they need to see."
Astrachan said that the goal of the class is to develop balanced teams so that a Duke team has the best chance of qualifying for the world finals.
To make it to the international finals, teams must place in the top two spots at a regional competition. This year, Duke sent five teams to the regional competition and had the top two finishers. But since each school is allowed to send only one team to the world finals, only the first place finisher is there.
In Honolulu, the team will compete against 63 other teams from 27 different countries on six continents.
Astrachan has high hopes for this year's team, especially since Duke teams usually perform well, having placed in the top 10 several times.
"They can win. We have three really smart people that are really good programmers," he said. "A little bit depends on whether or not they make stupid mistakes. [Part of it] is how well they work together. Whether someone is willing to give up the computer and let someone else go ahead and work is important. They have good interpersonal skills and they are all friends. That really helps."
Team members are not as confident.
"While this is the same idea as the regional competition, it's against better people with stiffer competition," Chatham said. "American teams usually don't win. The Russian teams are really good."
Others said they think their success will depend on the problems they are given.
"It's a lot of luck and it's hard to tell how well we will do," Arthur said. "We don't know if the problems will go the right way and if you make one mistake, it will kill you."
If the Duke team wins, each member will receive $10,000 in cash. But whether they win or lose, they are excited to be in Hawaii.
"It's a lot of fun being here," Arthur said. "Yesterday we went on the beach. We have seen a bunch of people we know on teams from other schools. It's kind of like a vacation."
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