For the first time, students from the University of Luxembourg participated in the 2021 Benelux Algorithm Programming Contest (BAPC) which consisted in solving the most algorithmic problems/puzzles as possible within the set time limit.
On 30 October 2021, the Benelux Algorithm Programming Contest (BAPC) gathered 90 teams of three students from Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. During four hours, they had to solve as many programming problems as they could.
Three student teams from the Bachelor in Computer Science at the University of Luxembourg took part in the competition. They share this wonderful experience.
1) What was the competition about?
“The contest brought together teams from universities across Benelux to compete against one another. We had to find solutions for twelve problems by using concepts from computer science, mathematics and general problem solving. This competition is a great way to improve one’s programming abilities as well as being a fun and competitive environment.”
Team Fork Bombers
Pavel Chernakov, Zofia Milczarek, Sena Kilinc
2) What did you do during the competition?
“The competition required us to solve problems with algorithms coded in any programming language that we want. The problems were all very different, going from solving math problems to path finding.
Each team was only given one computer, therefore only one person could be coding at any time. Our goal was to always have someone on the computer working on implementing an idea, while the other two would be working on paper to come up with solutions for other problems. It was very much a team effort.”
Team Fonkey-Monkey
Julien Kuehn, Titouan Guerin, Umut Ucak
3) What did you like the most?
“Competing against other students was very fun since it gave us motivation to do better than them, even though it was our first ever competition and it was very hard. In addition, we realised that being together in person has unquantifiable benefits, such as noticing an interesting part of a teammates workflow and introducing it into your own. Together we can share ideas and we improve because of it.”
Team Goofers
