At the morning I came from the national contest in programming (UOI, for those, who understand Ukrainian), which was held in Dnipropetrovsk, and lasted for one week. The hostel, where we settled, was located not far from the appartaments of my relatives, so I visited them several times. The contest itself was separated into 2 days with a one-day break between them, which we spent visiting the historical museum and the small island between left and right banks of the Dnipro river; on each of the contest days we were given 5 hours to solve 3 tasks. Also we have visited the organ hall, where we listened to the beautiful classical music, written by the famous composers, such as Mozart, Rossini, and the others.
Each task was worth 100 points, and, thus, the maximum possible amount of points was 300 at one stage, and 600 in total. Some of the tasks required optimisations; and straight forward implementation could lead to getting not all points for the task. At the first stage, which in my opinion was a simpler one, I have scored 20 points, which placed me close (if not exactly) to the last place. I do not want to get in the explanation of this result, but one of the reasons of this possibly is my being inattentive. At the second stage my result was 150, which was what I was expecting to get; it had put me up quitely, but not enough to get the 3rd diploma, which required at least a total amount of 195 points. However, I am happy with my result and, I think, that’s what I should have scored. My opinion on the result can be described by a phrase: “I have what I have, and what I deserve to”.
The other people from our team (representing the 9th and the 10th form) have scored 180 and 190 points, which was enough to get the 2nd and the 3rd displomas in their age groups, respectively. The prize I’ve got as a participant is English-Ukrainian explanatory dictionary of computer-related terms. The prize for people who’ve got the 3rd diplomas was headphones, 2nd diplomas – headphones and a mouse carpet, 1st diplomas – HP iPaq. Also there were some extra prizes.
We’ve had a lot fun during the contest and met other people, interested in programming, so I’m happy that I went there.
I will translate the tasks into English and make them available for public download in a while.
