About the NCSS Challenge

Learn to program while you compete!

The School of IT at the University of Sydney is running a programming challenge for high school students over 5 weeks in term 3, 2012 - starting on Monday 6th August.

Unlike existing competitions, the NCSS Challenge is designed to cater for beginners, intermediate and advanced students. Each week, a set of notes for either in-class or self-directed learning will be distributed to participants via email and online. A set of challenge questions testing this material will also be distributed. Each week's challenge set will range from relatively easy to extremely challenging allowing beginners to progress at their own rate whilst extending gifted students. The challenges will increase in complexity as more and more programming concepts are covered over the 5 weeks.

If you would like to take part, please register.

Participants will have a week to submit their solutions to the challenge website where they will be automatically marked. A full set of correct solutions, hints and commentary about each challenge will be distributed in the following week. Points will be awarded according to the difficulty of the challenges. Late submissions will be accepted for automatic marking but no points will be awarded. Some solutions may also be manually marked for design and style. The challenge website will show the leader board for individuals and schools.

This is an ideal opportunity for enthusiastic novice and experienced students to gain exposure to programming. The challenge is open to all Australian high school students, although it is most suited to Year 10/11 students and will develop students' programming skills for their major software projects. Teachers are welcome to register as non-competitors to gain more programming experience - ideal after attending a Teach Python workshop.

Registration costs $20 per participant for each stream (incl GST). The embedded stream requires access to special hardware that we supply, which costs an additional $85 (incl GST) and can be shared among a small group of students (we recommend a maximum of three). Students working at home will need to buy their own board. The hardware cost is subsidised by sponsors (the actual board cost is $175).

In 2012, there are four streams to the Challenge:

• The Beginners stream, for students with no prior experience at programming. It starts at the very beginning and the questions each week cover basic concepts;
• The Intermediate stream, for students who have previously completed the Beginners stream and for those students who may have some prior programming experience and are capable of starting off with something harder than Beginner. Advanced maths and science students in years 10 and above may also want to enter at this level;
• The Advanced stream, for students who know Python, have completed the Intermediate stream in a previous year and want harder problems. We are not kidding; unless you know Python already you do not want to start here. However if you know Python, and are on a quest for fame and glory, this is where you will ultimately want to be; and
• the Embedded stream, for students interested in the interface between software and the real world. This stream was developed in cooperation with NICTA and Embedded Systems Australia, and introduces the C programming language using the Arduino development environment. Places are limited, so contact us if you are interested.