Report on

The 1999 ACM Southern Africa Programming Contest

Sponsored by IBM

Hosted by the University of Pretoria

Additional locations at Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town

Date of Contest: Saturday, 18 September 1999

 

On Saturday the 18th of September, students from all over Southern Africa participated simultaneously in three different locations: Pretoria, Grahamstown and Cape Town. A total of 31 teams representing 6 different universities participated in the contest: 2 teams from Rhodes University, 2 teams from the University of Cape Town, 1 team from the University of Stellenbosch, 2 teams from the University of the Western Cape, 3 teams from the University of the Witwatersrand and 21 teams from the University of Pretoria.

Final Standings

The following standings are final (in terms of teams), even though some team members names have not been entered.

Position

Team name

Team members

University

Problems solved

Total time (incl. penalties)

1

TUKS 14

Jaco Cronje, , Danie Conradie, Gerhard Bijker

Pretoria

5

12h14:30

2

WITS 1

Goolam-Hussein Railoun, Richard Coppin, Paul Cook

Witwatersrand

5

12h44:10

3

TUKS 16

Graeme Pyle, James Pun, Roy Kfir

Pretoria

5

18h10:56

4

TUKS 3

Hein van Eeden, Tobie du Plessis

Pretoria

3

10h23:24

5 tie

TUKS 1

Bianca Neethling, Jason Neale, Warren Kemm

Pretoria

3

10h39:00

5 tie

UCT 4

???

Cape Town

3

10h39:00

7

SUN 1

Carl Scheffler, Cobus Combrink, Ben Bredenkamp

Stellenbosch

3

11h12:00

8

UCT 2

???

Cape Town

3

11h20:00

 

The problems

  1. On strike.
  2. Course scheduling.
  3. Bacterial growth.
  4. Wild-card matching.
  5. Disk sectors.
  6. Tabbifying.

A word of thanks

Nanette Saes functioned as the very capable day manager, not only throughout the day itself, but in all the preparations leading up to it.

Linda Marshall, Gert Nel and Samuel Kock of the Computer Science department at UP provided assistance in fending off tough questions, taking in submissions and generally keeping track of everything.

Technical support was provided by Chris Potgieter and his team who were there to smooth out any hardware and software glitches.

As for food and entertainment, Manhattan Bagels of Hatfield Plaza made sure that the energy level of the contestants stayed high with a timely supply of fresh bagels and muffins, Hotel 224 served up a great braai to fill in the gaps, and Nu Metro cinemas of Hatfield Plaza made sure that the students had their ‘eyes wide shut’ at the end of the day.

Of course all of this would not have been possible without the sponsors: IBM provided the main sponsorship for the contest, with local support provided by Epi-Use.