Hi,
next Saturday, on the 21st of November from 11:00 to 16:00, it is once again (with significant delay) time for GCPC.
This year, the GCPC will take place online. It is not necessary to leave your house to participate.
Please join our newly created Discord server until Wednesday (18th) if you want to participate: https://discord.gg/hj6Hbtdm
It will be used for communication, solution presentations after the competition and preparation for future contests.
You may also use the Discord to find team members. If you have a team, you can already register here: https://icpc.cs.fau.de/anmeldung/ [1]
Feel free to invite your fellow students to the competition.
The online format requires some changes to the competition rules. Most importantly, you may use your own hardware and software setup and the usual restriction of one computer per team does not apply.
If you have never competed in a GCPC or NWERC, here is some more information:
In the GCPC, you will work in teams of one to three people.
There are about 12 tasks, and your goal is to solve as many of them as possible. You send in your solution as a program that is evaluated automatically on some secret testdata. If the program is both correct and fast enough, you have solved the problem. The contest is 5 hours long.
If you want to read some example problems, here are those from 2018: http://gcpc.nwerc.eu/problemset_2018.pdf
Task I would be considered an easy task, while task M is hard.
Allowed languages are C++, Java and Python. It is not guaranteed that Python is fast enough to solve every problem, but everything can be solved in C++ and Java.
You are allowed to use any available material, but it is strictly prohibited to communicate with other teams during the contest.
Bachelor and Master students of any study course are eligible to participate. PhD-students are also sometimes eligible. Just ask me if you are not sure.
After the GCPC, there will be the NWERC (Northwestern Europe Regional Contest) sometime in spring. The exact format is not yet clear, but it will sadly not be in Reykjavík as originally planned.
Best,
Julian
[1] If you fill out the registration, your data will be transmitted to the ICPC organizers (https://icpc.global/). You will also likely receive an email asking for additional information. For GCPC, it should not be necessary to provide all of the requested information.
