By David Trussell
Computer Science Director

First, an important clarification for anyone who might still be uncertain. The programming language for this year’s UIL Computer Science contests will continue to be C++, and C++ will also be the language for the 2002-2003 school year. The contest will be moving to Java, but not until 2003-2004. More on that later.

At present, UIL Computer Science is probably the healthiest it’s ever been. We experienced no significant problems at any level of competition last spring, from invitationals all the way through to a near-perfect state contest.

There are a number of people who deserve credit for that success, including our wonderful team of consultants and test writers, the dedicated and hard-working folks who run our district and regional contests, and the coaches who have provided such invaluable input through our Computer Science Advisory Committee.

But success will be short-lived if it is not accompanied by a desire for continued improvement. With that in mind, we’ve made a number of small but important changes that we hope will make this year’s contests even better. All of these changes are products of the discussions at this year’s advisory committee meeting, which took place in August. Special thanks again to the coaches who were involved with that committee.

The topic list for this year’s written tests is very much the same as last year’s, with a couple of exceptions. The only new topic on the list is Abstract Data Types, which includes the apstack and apqueue classes. Also, the Pointers topic has been expanded and is now listed as Linked Lists, Binary Search Trees, Pointers and Dynamic Allocation. Finally, this year’s list is fully combined, eliminating the previous distinction between Invitational/District topics and Regional/State topics. (Visit the UIL web site for the complete topic list and other important information.) Click here to go to UIL Computer Science page.

The objective of combining the topic list is to allow our test writers an opportunity to introduce as many of the topics as possible at the invitational level - including the more advanced topics - and thus better prepare contestants for district, regional and state competition.

Contestants should not be discouraged if they struggle a bit more on this year’s invitational contests than they have in the past. Because of the effort to introduce more topics, this year’s invitational tests may actually be harder than the district tests. But remember that the primary purposes of invitational meets are practice and preparation for the meets that really count, at district and beyond.

The hands-on part of the contest will also see some changes this year. The number of problems on each problem set will be increased from eight to 10, and the range of point values will be decreased dramatically. The problems will continue to range in difficulty from basic to hard, but the point values will be limited to only four, five or six points per problem (four points for basic problems, five for medium difficulty and six for the most challenging problems).

The reason for this change in scoring is to encourage contestants to focus on solving more problems rather than problems of certain point value, as well as to prevent a single hands-on problem from having a disproportionate impact on the overall team standings.

We’ll also be implementing an important procedural change for the hands-on contest this year. In the past, teams have included only source code when submitting their solutions. This year, teams will submit both the source code AND an executable file on their disks. Judges will be able to look at the executable first and then refer to the source code as needed.

We tried this procedure at the state contest last May, and it proved extremely effective, particularly in eliminating some of the problems that can occur due to compiler variations.

These and the other adjustments we’ve made are intended to carry us through our last two years with C++. Beginning with next summer’s advisory committee meeting, we’ll be shifting our focus toward preparing for the transition to Java. At that meeting, we’ll make preliminary decisions on test content, reference books, compilers, etc. That information will then be disseminated at next fall’s Student Activities Conferences and through the UIL web site, so that everyone will have a full year to get ready. (Refer to the Contest Update currently posted on the web site to find information on how to begin preparing for Java now.) Click here to go to UIL Computer Science page.

As a final note, I’d like to welcome the newest member of our Computer Science team: Mike Scott, who is a member of the computer science faculty at The University of Texas. He joins Dr. Dennis Carroll of IBM-Houston, Jeff Ford of UT-Austin and Dr. Twila Lehmann of Angelo State University to complete an incredibly talented team of consultants and test writers. We’re very excited to have Mike on board.

Best of luck as you prepare for this year’s contests.