Increasing the Appeal of Programming Contests with Tasks Involving Graphical User Interfaces and Computer Graphics

Pedro Ribeiro and Pedro Guerreiro

2007

Abstract

Programming contests should be capable of being appealing to both the contestants and the general public. We feel that the use of graphical user interfaces and computer graphics could help achieve this goal, providing new ways of viewing the task. We describe experiments we made with games (Tic-Tac-Toe, Snake and Ataxx, an Othello-like game), which were made available to students with graphical components, and discuss the results. We also present a simple graphic library where simple drawings can be made and show how it can be used in a programming contest environment. We then conclude by revisiting some past IOI problems, suggesting ways to enhance them with graphical components.

Keywords

programming contests, graphical user interfaces, computer graphics

Reference (text)

Pedro Ribeiro and Pedro Guerreiro. Increasing the Appeal of Programming Contests with Tasks Involving Graphical User Interfaces and Computer Graphics . In Olympiads in Informatics, Vol. 1, pp. 149-164, 2007.

Bibtex

@article{ribeiro-IOI2007,
  author = {Pedro Ribeiro and Pedro Guerreiro},
  title = {Increasing the Appeal of Programming Contests with Tasks Involving Graphical User Interfaces and Computer Graphics },
  journal = {Olympiads in Informatics},
  volume = {1},
  pages = {149-164},
  year = {2007}
}