NCSS Challenge 2008
Welcome
Welcome to the NCSS Challenge 2008
Hi everyone -- at Challenge Central we're busy preparing notes and problems for the next five weeks.
If this is your first time, we hope you enjoy the Challenge, and if you participated last year, welcome back!
We have two divisions this year: ordinary and advanced. If you are new to programming, or new to the Python programming language, we recommend the ordinary stream. If you're already a strong programmer and you know Python, give the advanced stream a try.
There will be questions and notes posted for both streams next Monday (July 28), and you can switch back and forth during the first week, so check out both if you're not sure. And don't worry if the advanced stream looks too easy: it's going to get a whole lot tougher over the next five weeks!
Online payments
Quite a few people have asked about paying online rather than by cheque. Unfortunately, we haven't sorted out details with the university in time for this year's Challenge, so online payments are not available.
Don't worry if you haven't sent in a cheque already: you can start the Challenge, and as long as we receive the cheque in the next few weeks, you'll be in the running for one of our shiny certificates.
Welcome to the NCSS Challenge for 2008! The Challenge is being run by the School of Information Technologies, at the University of Sydney as part of the ACS National Computer Science School (NCSS).
The Challenge is unlike any other programming competition because we will teach you how to program as we go along rather than expecting you to be an expert coder already. However, if you are a seasoned coder, we have something for you too because the problems will range from relatively simple through to mind-bendingly hard.
For 5 weeks starting on Monday, July 28, we will email you a short Python tutorial containing the information you will need to complete the week's programming challenges. If you would like to take part, please register.
You will have until Sunday night to submit your solutions to the Challenge website, where they will be marked automatically. A full set of correct solutions, hints and commentary about each challenge will be sent out the following week.
If you have questions or comments, email us at challenge@it.usyd.edu.au.