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




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
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
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
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Managers of programming projects aren’t always aware that certain programming issues are matters of religion. If you’re a manager and you try to require compliance with certain programming practices, you’re inviting your programmers’ ire. Here’s a list of religious issues:
■ Programming language
■ Indentation style
■ Placing of braces
■ Choice of IDE
■ Commenting style
■ Efficiency vs. readability tradeoffs
■ Choice of methodology—for example, Scrum vs. Extreme Programming vs. evolutionary delivery ■ Programming utilities
■ Naming conventions
■ Use of gotos
■ Use of global variables
■ Measurements, especially productivity measures such as lines of code per day
--Steve McConnell
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
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
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
I'm a programmer. I like programming. And the best way I've found to have a positive impact on code is to write it.
--Robert C. Martin
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
With software there are only two possibilites: either the users control the programme or the programme controls the users. If the programme controls the users, and the developer controls the programme, then the programme is an instrument of unjust power.
--Richard Stallman
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
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
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham