Abstract:

Information Technologies and Computer Sciences attract young people with the growing importance of the industry and the vast opportunities for future professional career realization. Participation in Informatics competitions has a positive effect on professional development and the abilities of the students. Thus, competitive programming must be encouraged, organized, and further developed. The extracurricular activities in competitive programming carry a lot of benefits for the students who get involved in it. Competitive exercises develop analytical and algorithmic thinking. The programming problems which are to be solved at competitions are significantly more complicated compared to the ones that can be usually found during the software development process. This way the students get better training for the actual professional world. Last but not least, by doing this, the students have the prospect of enhancing their employability opportunities. The big software companies highly appreciate and seek programmers with a competitive background because they value their abilities a lot. Most of the interviewing process with these firms requires a lot of competitive and logical thinking.

Within our department, we have been training students for programming competitions for more than 20 years. The good practices that have been used in the students’ preparation for the competitions in programming are described in this article. Historical facts have been examined from Informatics competitions and the specific characteristics of competitive programming have been analyzed. Furthermore, the strategies in the students’ training have been described through a specially developed web-based system. The training and participation in competitions are a way of building up key professional skills, discipline, and the ability to work well in a team for the students.

Keywords:

Computer science education, students' training, competitive programming.