F.: A New Paradigm for Programming Competitions

The annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Con-test produces a competitive paradigm that is at odds with the pedagogical goals of modern computer science and soft-ware engineering degree programs. This paradigm stresses the fast completion of a programming task and evaluates the results solely with black-box testing specified by the judges. In contrast, the pedagogical goals of contemporary college degree programs in computing emphasize the quality of pro-cesses inherent in software development and implementa-tion. In 2007, the College of Charleston student chapter of the ACM hosted its annual high school programming com-petition by turning the conventional programming paradigm on its head to focus on quality-of-process rather than time-to-complete. The judging criteria included both technical and artistic merit. The implementation of the competition emphasized success by giving students working skeleton so-lution programs. This paper presents the motivation for the new paradigm, the details of its implementation for the 2007 competition, and the details of the new techniques for judging technical and artistic merit