Octagons's blog

ICPC Teens ?
By Octagons, history, 9 days ago, In English

The ICPC is renowned as one of the largest competitive programming contests, but it is exclusively for university students. For school students, there is the IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics), which is an individual, OI-style contest, unlike the ICPC, which is a team-based, CPC-style contest.

In the Arab and African regions, there is a teen version of the competition designed for school students. However, since other regions do not have a similar teen version, implementing an ICPC for teens on a global scale seems unlikely.

I'm curious to hear everyone’s opinion on this. Do you think it would be a good idea to have a teen version of the ICPC, or is it unnecessary? Personally, I’m not sure, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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9 days ago, # |
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I think there should be an international-type contest for teens , atleast to open more oppurtunities. Especially for teens who want to excel in their competitive programming career as a whole. Yet, it wouldn't be anytime soon. Since, something like this needs alot of effort , sponsors and investments and actual people who would pay for the fees and everything so, i think maybe it could be possible but just not right now and i think the IOI is a good enough contest but of course a Teens ICPC sounds pretty cool in my opinion.

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    9 days ago, # ^ |
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    There is already IIOT where you can participate in teams in an OI style format while also having fun doing it with your friends and/or colleagues.

    For more details on how to join, you can check us here and we would love to have as many countries onboard in order to have more contestants enjoy more training for IOI while also giving the chance to newcomers to learn from top contestants.

    Most of the past problems can be found here and here

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9 days ago, # |
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Support

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9 days ago, # |
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IOI for university students when

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    9 days ago, # ^ |
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    Yes!! I'm a high school student and I love OI-style problems, with subtasks and no penalities. I'm sad that I'll have to abandon this competition style once I'll join uni :(

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9 days ago, # |
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We need it

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9 days ago, # |
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Greedy you are, university students didn't cry before about ioi

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9 days ago, # |
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Can we instead have more open contests please?

ICPC and IOI both are very annoying because they are only eligible for students of universities and schools. And I dislike both even though I am atill eligible for ICPC

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    9 days ago, # ^ |
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    No big company cares about competitive programming to sponsor. Even Meta may switch to AI in the future. CP is useless in the real world.

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      9 days ago, # ^ |
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      CP and ML competitions are not mutually exclusive. It's even the opposite, CP is a good benchmark for machine intelligence:

      1. it's not overcomplicated, has a well defined performance metric (rating)
      2. can be broken down into different aspects that can be improved incrementally: agency (accessing tasks, submitting solutions), problem understanding (translation of a problem statement to a formal task), problem solving, self-correction\testing

      There are already leaderboards on huggingface evaluating offline model performance on CP tasks, online model participation in contests alongside humans is just a logical next step.

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      9 days ago, # ^ |
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      Are you even serious? Take a look at some of the successful AI startups, almost every single one has engineers who did competitive programming before.

      The first AI software engineer Devin AI's founder is scott_wu, and the startup team has a total of 10 ioi gold medals.

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        9 days ago, # ^ |
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        Oh, yes, Devin the gpt wrapper. I'm not sure where you got your statistics from. Anyway, it doesn't change my point. You never get to solve these made up puzzles in the real world, so why should companies sponsor these events?

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        8 days ago, # ^ |
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        "Almost every single one" — lists only one

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    I fully support this.

    I think it is stupid that the most prestigious CP contest is for students only. Sometimes it feels like when you become an adult, you are just supposed to grind in the office and be a family man.

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      7 days ago, # ^ |
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      But but, there are a couple open CP contests... Only thing is you can already predict the finalists from the start.

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      7 days ago, # ^ |
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      To add, most companies sponsor these contests for students because they are looking for young talents, not because they care about CP.

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      3 days ago, # ^ |
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      First, there are quite famous contests for adults like VkCup.

      Second, there is Competitive Programming Federation in Russia, so there is movement here.

      Third, competitive programming is supposed to be useful for real life economy. Otherwise it's puzzles for puzzles sake. In that case, student should end their competitive career someday... to compete in work!

      Fourth, if ICPC is not for for students only, then Tourist-ish people are winning every year. Everyone else is sad.

      Fifth, grinding the office and having a family is not the worst of fates :) There are places where work is quite exciting and where our skills and knowledge are truly useful. You just need to know places and/or know how to find them.

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    This so much. So tired of seeing this growing list of people who only participate on cf/atcoder up until the end of their IOI or ICPC eligibility. And most tend to fully retire too, not even leave cp as a semi-serious hobby or anything.

    Funnily enough, someone just argued in my DM's that IOI is so prestigious and well respected because it's kind of like a world championship in sports. But aren't sports world championships actually way more open and some amazing people dominate there for over a decade?

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9 days ago, # |
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We need IOI for university students and ICPC for school students.I think it is great idea

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9 days ago, # |
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Support ❤

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9 days ago, # |
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And also to be IOI for university students

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9 days ago, # |
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In Vietnam, the ICPC Vietnam allows high school students to form team and participate unofficially along with university students. We even have a separate high school ICPC division and award prizes exclusively in this division for such teams (like first prize, second prize, etc).

Unfortunately these awards are only recognized up to the National level and are still considered unofficial international-wise, as well as there are no chance for these teams to participate in Regionals or higher.

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    9 days ago, # ^ |
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    Surprisingly, there were several times where high school teams dominated the scoreboard if I'm not mistaken.

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      8 days ago, # ^ |
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      I have mentioned somewhere that Zhoukangyang won a regional contest that featured the runner up of ICPC WF 2023 2 years ago. And he was just a freshman at that time. What a formidable guy.

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8 days ago, # |
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We definitely need this ICPC for middle school students. :)

In China, some middle school teams participate in local regionals (unofficially, their results won't count for WF selection and so), but it's not popular and only few schools can participate. If we have an international one then more will join the competitions <3

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    chinese need to relax and wait for icpc at the college level

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8 days ago, # |
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I didn't read your post, but it is called the IOI.

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    the IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics), which is an individual, OI-style contest, unlike the ICPC, which is a team-based, CPC-style contest.

    so, no.

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      8 days ago, # ^ |
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      Well, at the end of the day, you're solving the same sorts of problems.

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        8 days ago, # ^ |
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        The style of problems are noticeably different

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    "I didn't read your post, but here's my unsolicited opinion.", this is not reddit my guy.

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      8 days ago, # ^ |
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      Believe it or not, I can give my unsolicited opinion on more places than just reddit.

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8 days ago, # |
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In Taiwan, high school and younger students had an ICPC-style competition hosted by National Taiwan University, but it was discontinued this year. I support creating a global ICPC for teens. (I'm sorry for my bad English)

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    Hi, can you provide the contest name in Chinese? Are the previous problem sets available?

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      8 days ago, # ^ |
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      Contest name in Chinese: "NPSC 網際網路程式設計全國大賽"

      link

      The contest is divided into three groups, elementary school group (use the same problem set with junior high school group), junior high school group, and senior high school group.

      There's a preliminary round online, and the teams ranked before 20 will advance to the final.

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8 days ago, # |
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i don't get the purpose of this. IOI isn't good enough?

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    I think the difference is:\n

    IOI is for not university student\n

    ICPC is for university student\n

    so we nede to interchange both to make it improved

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    IOI has a cap of 4 participants per country, while ICPC can even have multiple teams from 1 college, and also the style of the problems is very different. And the biggest difference is obviously that ICPC is a team competition, whilst IOI is solo

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      8 days ago, # ^ |
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      USACO Gold, Platinum, other countries' equivalents not good enough? Having two major CP contests at the same age level is bad.

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        8 days ago, # ^ |
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        Well it clearly isn't good enough for some people. Why is having 2 major CP contests at same age bad?

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          7 days ago, # ^ |
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          Some people? Who? Being in the top 10 CPers in the country isn't good enough?

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            7 days ago, # ^ |
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            ..the writer of the blog? or the 200+ people who upvoted the blog?

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8 days ago, # |
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Every single competitive programming contests are good things. We need more and more contests

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8 days ago, # |
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ICPC is not good for people who can't find enough team mates. And both IOI and ICPC are not for everyone.

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    If removing the limitation that teams need to be from the same university then making a team is easier.

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8 days ago, # |
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As someone who has done both IOI and ICPC, I think a teen version of ICPC is probably not a good idea.

First of all, the differences between IOI and ICPC are quite significant. In my opinion, the differences are as follows:

ICPC:

  • Team contest
  • Mistakes are punished more heavily
  • Speed matters more
  • Problem style is geared towards (generally) shorter implementation, hard ideation

IOI:

  • Individual contest
  • Mistakes are not punished as much
  • Speed matters less
  • Problem style is geared towards step-by-step analysis of ideas and generally have a harder implementation

IMO OI-style contests are better at increasing one's competitive programming abilities. In addition, the team aspect of ICPC can be quite complicated sometimes (depending on the university, culture etc). Managing the team dynamic, resolving conflicts, etc could lead to disastrous results if dealing with someone that is immature.

PS: Maybe individual version of ICPC might make sense for HS students?

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    In our regional (ECPC/ACPC teens) the team size is decreased to 2 instead of 3

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      8 days ago, # ^ |
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      I guess this would resolve the team dynamic issue, sounds like a great format!

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    8 days ago, # ^ |
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    "Speed matters more" is something that I don't quite fully agree, but thinking about it I'm comparing it to CF. In a team contest you have more time to think before implementing, that itself makes implementation faster (individual coding speed matters less than efficiently making use of the time you're not coding). In cf you have to do everything fast by yourself. In IOI style contests you can take a nap and still have enough time for problems.

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      8 days ago, # ^ |
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      I think my viewpoint might be because I am not very good at making use of the time I'm not coding, thanks for the insight :D

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8 days ago, # |
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The idea is overall good. I have just one suggestion: please, let it be organized by anybody but ICPC people.

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8 days ago, # |
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Simply World Championship. Countries delegate their sportsmen. Each country also competes for quota — how many sportsmen it can delegate. WC singles (one day), WC teams (another day). No age/grade restrictions.

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8 days ago, # |
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It is hoped to establish a world competition based on ioi for university students

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8 days ago, # |
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I think there are multiple reasons why training for specifically team contests is much more suited to university type students rather than high school students. I'm thinking about factors like university duties/time management/environment around you/maturity both as a person and as a competitor/support from the represented institution etc.

Also, if suddenly an ICPC-style contest for high school students materialized out of nowhere, it would obviously be a nice thing to have, but we shouldn't think about it in a void, but rather in the context of who will organize it, where the money for the organization will come from etc. In some sense all these resources and willpower can be spent for something else, so we'd need to think if that's the best option. As I already said, I don't think that team contests for high school students is the most suited thing to have and also I think that currently we are in a serious lack of onsite open individual competitions. GCJ, DCJ, TCO (and Yandex?) ceased to exist, FBHC moved online and the only remaining one is AGC World Finals. AGC is great to have, but it's very hard to qualify for (I think 8 slots only compared to usual 25) and it's only one.

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7 days ago, # |
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The problem is, in many countries the “relevant contest” for teens (before uni) is the Olympiad, and since the other big science olympiads (I’m talking about math and physics mainly because idk much about chemistry) have this contest style of individual and 3-4 problems with partial scoring in maybe 3-5 hours, the main programming contest should kind of follow the same pattern. Moreover, many governments don’t want to support many (usually more than one) Olympiad per subject. In Romania we have IIOT as a team contest, but it is looked at as some second-rank contest at the moment, especially because it is considered not to be too relevant for actual skill evaluation. Moreover, since young students usually study somewhere close to home (definitely not in other countries like it is the case for many at university), fair teams are hard to form for many that are in a weak region in terms of cp but that are actually very skilled themselves.

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    7 days ago, # ^ |
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    Yeah IIOT has some problems regarding fairness in teams. I think that the optimal solution is to simply allow anyone from the same country to participate together rather than in the same school/region

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      7 days ago, # ^ |
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      First, IIOT and individual OI aren't evaluating exactly the same skills, and a teen ICPC wouldn't do the same thing either, since speed, teamwork abilities and other dynamics have a way more important role than they have in OI.

      On the other hand, one of IIOT's main purposes is to bring more people in the competitive programming scene, and although the current team format is not perfect for deciding who the best students are, I think that having contests where a team can improve over the course of the rounds held during the year is a great incentive towards having students become better at competitive programming themselves and later even perform reasonably well at the individual Olympiads.

      After all, I think the biggest gain a competition like IIOT brings is the extra practice students get, plus an opportunity to learn from higher skilled students who can later establish competitive programming groups (doesn't always happen in practice, but it happens more often than not).

      Personally, I believe competitions and especially high and middle school Olympiads are not just about whoever wins and gets the top medals, but also about fostering an environment for young talented students to maximize their potential so that later on in life, they use them to achieve great things in life, regardless of their future path.

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7 days ago, # |
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IOI for university students when

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7 days ago, # |
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To add, in Russia we have ВКОШП — All-Russian Teams Olympiad for School Students — and we all really love it!

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7 days ago, # |
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In Bangladesh, top students from the Olympiad can form teams and participate in the ICPC and other local inter-university ICPC-styled contests unofficially.

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