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




There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
The personal computer isn't "personal" because it's small and portable and yours to own. It's "personal" because you pour yourself into it - your thoughts, your programming.
--Audrey Watters
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
...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
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
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
Along every step of our journey through life, our mind is being programmed. If we are not programming it ourselves, someone else is doing it to us.
--Joseph Rain
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven