York Programming Contests

Welcome to the York Programming Contests page.

(And the contest that used to be called ACM and is now called ICPC)

• If you want to be informed about future contests, click the “Contact Us” link on the left to see how to be added to our mailing list.

• To take part in the contest, create an account at http://open.kattis.com Make sure you remember your username and password!

See the links on the left for earlier contests.

You will be given several problems and two hours to write programmes to solve them. You can choose to write your code in C, C++, Java, Python, or a number of other languages.

Everyone! Come if you're in your first year, your final year, or anywhere in between.

See the box at the top of this page for announcements of the time and location of the next upcoming contest.

• For fun.
• To develop your programming skills.
• To meet your fellow students.
• To develop your problem-solving skills.
• To prepare and qualify for the ACM Programming Contest.

The practice contests are usually in one of the computer labs on the first floor of the Lassonde Building. See individual contest announcements for details.

If you really cannot make it to the contest, it is possible to participate remotely (but it is much more fun to be in the same room as everybody else, and coaches sometimes give hints to those who are in the room).

The ACM Programming Contest is a contest that draws thousands of participants from around the world. We will be choosing students from those that participate in the York programming contests to represent York at the regional contest on November 9. (This would look great on your resume). If you do well in the regional contest, you could get to go to the international contest next April.

To get an idea of the style of contest problems or to get additional practice, check out the big archive of sample contest problems (of varying levels of difficulty). (Click on “Browse Problems” on that site.) That site also has an online judge, so you can submit your solution and see if it is correct. Another similar source is Kattis. This site is similar.

Practice contests are organized from time to time by the Kattis site and the Universidad de Valladolid site (click on “Contests”).

For actual problems from past ACM International Collegiate Programming Challenge contests, see this site.

If you want a more structured way of preparing for the contests, read the book Programming Challenges by Steven Skiena and Miguel Revilla and solve the problems in it.

A former York undergrad, Trevor Brown, set up a web site with an annotated list of programming contest problems that you can use for practice.

Here are some pictures from the 2010 regional contest.