UMD High School Programming Contest Environment
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Contest Rules

Students compete in teams of four. Programs are written in C++, and submitted electronically to the judges who test the programs and decide if a submission satisfies the correctness criteria. Contestants are allowed to bring textbooks and notes, but no disks or other computer media. If you are interested in additional details about the format of the competition, you can view the complete rules.

Programming in C++

Contestants for the programming contest are required to submit their solutions in C++. There are several good books on learning C++. We provide links to a few books below.
  • The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup
  • C++: The Core Language by Satir & Brown

    • The programming contest was not designed to test your knowledge of features of C++, so students only need to learn C++ sufficiently well to implement their programs efficiently and correctly. We used Microsoft Visual C++ Studio (version 6.0), but students were not allowed to use any Microsoft specific language extensions or template classes.

    Another good resource on C++ is from the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam. As an aid to contestants, the APCS C++ Classes will be provided. These classes allow contestants to use existing code for queues, stacks, strings, vectors, and matrices, if they desire.

  • AP Computer Science
  • C++ information
  • APCS classes
  • Case studies