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From: dwallach@soda.berkeley.edu (Dan Wallach)
Newsgroups: comp.org.acm
Subject: Programming languages/different machines in contests
Summary: you can pick your own language, but can you pick the computer?
Message-ID: <1991May12.213538.1544@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 12 May 91 21:35:38 GMT
References: <6X3B-PB@xds13.ferranti.com> <1494@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> <1991May9.010805.21605@mcs.kent.edu>
Sender: root@agate.berkeley.edu (Charlie Root)
Organization: UC Berkeley, Computer Science Undergraduate Association
Lines: 33

I competed quite a bit in high school, and I Turbo was the only way to go.
Since contests are always timed, the fast turnaround of Turbo is a godsend.

Most recently, I went to a contest where we were given a choice: Turbo C
or Pascal.  My group chose C and everybody was happy.  It seems to me that
if people really wanted Standard Pascal, that could be offered, too.  I
see no reason to have a contest with ONE language, ESPECIALLY something
icky like BASIC.

Especially since style doesn't really matter in these contests, there's no
reason not to offer both C and Pascal.  If judges can read one, they can
read the other (sans obfuscated C, of course...).  Turbo Pascal's string
libraries are similar to ANSI C's standard library functions, in terms of
utility, so there's not much of a conflict of "but the Pascal guy already
had the whole program written for him!"  I don't know how true this is
for Object Oriented Turbo Pascal.

I'd like to bring up a different topic with regard to contests: should
they always be on PC's?  The last contest I went to had a lab of PS/2
286 boxes using some horrendous networked disk thing which made saving
a modest executable a 2 minute adventure, especially in the final half
hour of the contest...

For H.S., most people have only been exposed to PC's, and that's about
all you can offer them.  For college contests, however, workstations
would be lots nicer, i.e., having GNU programming tools.  How could
you prevent security problems from arising, like 'talk'ing to a friend
at home and asking questions, or even ftp-ing solutions from elsewhere?

Thought for food,

Dan Wallach
dwallach@soda.berkeley.edu