Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Fall 2023 -- CSC 2700 Section 01 (2317 Patrick Taylor, 6:00 PM - 7:50 PM)



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Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
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
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
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
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
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
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