Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Spring 2026 -- CSC 2700 Section 01
1218 Patrick Taylor Hall, 6:30 PM - 8:20 PM



Class Home




'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
But while you can always write 'spaghetti code' in a procedural language, object-oriented languages used poorly can add meatballs to your spaghetti.
--Andrew Hunt
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
You are not reading this book because a teacher assigned it to you, you are reading it because you have a desire to learn, and wanting to learn is the biggest advantage you can have.
--Cory Althoff
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
The really good programmers spend a lot of time programming. I haven’t seen very good programmers who don’t spend a lot of time programming. If I don’t program for two or three days, I need to do it. And you get better at it—you get quicker at it. The side effect of writing all this other stuff is that when you get to doing ordinary problems, you can do them very quickly.
--Joe Armstrong
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
...I’m not saying simple code takes less time to write. You’d think it would since you end up with less total code, but a good solution isn’t an accretion of code, it’s a distillation of it.
--Robert Nystrom
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
Our consciousness is programmed. We see things a certain way from a young age - we're programmed to keep doing them that way. Then you have to spend adulthood learning how to overcome it, to read out the programs. Try to create. I want to tell people to create. Just start by creating your day. Then create your life.
--Prince