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




That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
--Theodore H. White
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
One knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
--Brian Kernighan
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
--Rick Cook
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
The issue of finding the best possible answer or achieving maximum efficiency usually arises in industry only after serious performance or legal troubles.
--Steven S. Skiena
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
So if an algorithm is an idealized recipe, a program is the detailed set of instructions for a cooking robot preparing a month of meals for an army while under enemy attack
--Kernighan Brian
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare