Over the past weekend, we traveled to EPFL to participate in the Helvetic Coding Contest. The contest was well-organized, with lots of balloons, unlimited El Tony Mates, and fantastic prizes. A big thank you to the organizers!
The results were as expected. The professional category was won by the team “Felt smart(might unparticipate later)” consisting of Antti and Oleksandr from ETH. They dominated the contest from the start, never relinquishing their lead and solving 20 of 21 problems. The team “Breakfast Master Toaster” from ETH consisting of Michal, Priska and Andrei won the student category by solving 16 of 21 problems. Congrats to both teams!
We participated in the ICPC EUC last weekend in Prague, where we competed against the top 13 teams from each European region. dETHroners(Teo, Paula, Michal), finished 11th out of 52 teams. While this event offered teams a chance to qualify for the ICPC World Finals 2024 in Kazakhstan, dETHroners secured a spot by smashing the SWERC in Paris earlier this year.
On Friday morning, Teo, Michal, and I were so eager that we hit Zurich airport super early. Meanwhile, Paula arrived just in time, having timed her arrival two minutes before boarding perfectly. Once in Prague, we hopped on trams that seemed to have witnessed the invention of the wheel. Further, we did an extensive sightseeing thanks to Michal’s guiding skills. Almost geting lost in a train station? But hey, we did not get stuck in the train station this time 🙂
The opening ceremony was a blast, filled with Czech humor and a Soviet Theremin Concert. And who could forget the surprise guests: Boston Dynamics Robots… most of them managed to walk, at least.
The Czech Technical University was like stepping into a fantasy world: elevators called “paternosters” and doors straight out of a hobbit’s dream. Of course, snapping pics by those hobbit doors was important—memories to show after 20 years?
During the contest, the coaches had to listen to a one-hour answer by the ICPC Executive Director explaining why ACM stopped sponsoring ICPC. Fortunately, I was preoccupied with the mirror contest alongside the Coach of Universität des Saarlandes.
Overall, everyone was impressed by the Prague organizers, who managed to avoid any major issues this time, unlike the two-hour power outage during the last contest in Prague. Some attendees were puzzled by the decision to hold the contest under a glass ceiling though!
HC2 is Switzerland’s biggest programming contest and it will be held on Saturday, April 13th, at EPFL in Lausanne. Similarly to the ICPC, you participate in teams of up to three programmers sharing one computer.
We will be hosting Competitive Programming Meetups every Thursday at 7 pm until the end of the semester. The meeting room is always either CAB H52 or H53.
During the last weekend of January, two teams from ETH ZĂĽrich, led by coaches Ahmet and Bernhard, participated in the ICPC Southwestern Europe Regional Contest held in Paris. The contest included 108 teams from 65 institutions spanning France, Israel, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland.
True to the name, the dETHroners(Theodor, Paula, and Michal) dethroned the SWERC, achieving the gold medal and first place with 11 solved problems. This marked a historic moment for ETH, as our last first-place finish was 13 years ago.
doublETHink(Jasmin, Chris, and Ema) solved 8 problems and narrowly missed the bronze medal due to a slight time penalty.
Besides, doublETHink were the first team to solve the problem J, while dETHroners accomplished the same feat for problem G.
This performance qualified the dETHroners for the upcoming ICPC European Championship in Prague this March and the World Finals in Astana this September.
1 hour and 36 minutes to the end, the race for the second place heats upFinal Standings
Swiss Subregional 2023-24 took place on December 9th at ETH, EPFL and USI. All three top positions within the top 3 were secured by students from ETH, with a total of six students from ETH achieving positions in the top 10. We have added it to Codeforces Gym for future training, more info can be found here.
Johannes maintaining “Balloon Distributor” and Bernhard managing 4 different contestsKonstantin blowing up balloons for “Guess Gauss”Yuda and Mihnea trying to figure out how Ahmet mapped the seating planBalloon Squad continues their work
Bernhard checking if everything runs smoothly after answering every question with “Read the Statement”Congratulations to Theodor, Paula and MichaĹ‚ for getting into Top 3
ICPC Swiss Subregional 2023-24 will happen on December 9th, 9:15! For more information, including signup, please go to https://vis.ethz.ch/en/events/624/.
In late August, the ICPC hosted its first ICPC Challenge Championship powered by Huawei. Qualification for this event was earned through good placement in ICPC challenges held on Codeforces. Two students from ETH were invited to participate in the championship. Bernhard qualified by achieving second prize in the contest “Topology-Aware VM Placement”. Konstantin received an invitation as a coach and received an award for Outstanding Mentorship for his guidance to the ETH teams in the ICPC world finals.
Bernhard and Konstantin with Huawei HR Manager
The championship, held at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China, brought together 58 contestants from around the world. The challenge focused on “Buffer Sharing and Pre-allocation for Multi-tenant Databases”, with Bernhard ranking 24th. Aside from the competition, participants enjoyed various activities such as a tour of Huawei’s campus & factories, as well as a meeting with Huawei’s CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei. Minutes of the meeting can be found here.
For those interested in upcoming ICPC challenges, announcements and details are regularly posted on Codeforces. These challenges differ from traditional ICPC contests, emphasizing a single optimization problem and are open to participants with no age or university restrictions.
Further Information on the ICPC Challenge Championship can be found here.
First things first, HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to the amazing team of Marcel Bezdrighin, Antti Röyskö and Yuhao Yao for achieving the 5th place at the ICPC World Finals Dhaka, winning a silver medal, and becoming ICPC Europe Champions! This is ETH’s first silver medal, and the best performance of any SWERC university in the history of the contest! There are some images in the end of this article.
On another note, the ICPC Swiss Subregional 2022-23 will happen on December 10th, 9:15! For more information, including signup, please go to https://vis.ethz.ch/en/events/457/.
