An international competitive programming training bootcamp wrapped up today in Muscat. The Hello Muscat ICPC Bootcamp, took place at the German University of Technology campus from the 8 to the 16th March. The event was organized by Harbour Space University and Code forces, in collaboration with the German University of Technology in Oman under the sponsorship of local software consultancy PhazeRo.
More than 90 universities from around the world participated in the event.
CEO, and Co-founder of Harbour Space, a technology and design University Svetlana Velikanova, explained the importance of the bootcamp, “We had the idea that Oman would benefit from having high quality training for computer science students run by international computer science and programming stars.”
Adding, “ And if those students could meet with these international stars it would inspire them to deepen their knowledge of computer science, specifically data structures and algorithms and to start participating in international competitions such as ICPC , the international collegiate programming competition, which is the oldest and most prestigious competition in computer science.”
According to Velikanova, the bootcamp provides training opportunities across three divisions, division c for newcomers, B to help teams prepare for regional competitions and A designed for previous finalists and qualified teams .
“ The reason why we do these bootcamps is to first of all inspire people and deepen their knowledge in computer science, second is to train them to help them get trained well before they put their knowledge to the test, and third is for the qualifying world finals teams to compete with each other to see where they stand in terms of strengths and weaknesses” None of the students in Oman have qualified for the ICPC World Finals yet, however Velikanova believes that this can change.
“The teams from Oman who participated showed great spirit and desire to learn, despite their lack of experience in comparison to other participants, although the level of competitive programming in Oman is still at a primary stage, with the establishment of several key foundations Oman’s competitive programming community will be able to join those of other countries in the race to World Championship.”
Velkanova further explained the importance of competitive programming for computer science students. “If Omani programmers would like to work for big tech companies like Google or Amazon ... [ and for them to be able to] to pass their interviews, they would require the knowledge of competitive programming because all of the interview questions asked by these companies will revolve around topics and skills that you learn in competitive programming.”
Hajid al Kindi, a computer science student and the president of the computer science club at the German University of Technology in Oman, shared “Throughout the bootcamp we learned how to manage our time better, learned values of teamwork hand to hand, and improved many essential skills.” “The future for competitive programming in Oman is looking bright given that we have many brilliant young minds that are training and working hard from different educational initiations, and I would love to see more local students participate in international coding competitions,” he added.
The first edition of the bootcamp was held previously in 2019.
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