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cs,
pizza,
programming
Episode 10: Eating Pizza is the Best Form of Programming
(continuing the saga)
It was Junior year, and near the end. I was beginning to develop a taste for missing class (one that would grow exponentially in 12th grade) and so was always on the lookout for any opportunity to slip away from the dull, monotonic, boring lectures of school. And this is the tale of one such opportunity.
It was that time of year again, when my friend (who is a programming god) was going to enter the state highschool computer-programming contest. He would represent the school, compete for rank, eat unlimited pizza, and put some more flare on his resume. A pretty good gig.
The rules allowed only one team per school, and only four students per team. And since my friend had participated the year before--and no one else seemed to know about this event, I invited myself along as a member of the team. Even though I couldn't program to save my life.
I wanted the pizza.
I wanted the excused absence.
And I wanted some padding for the old resume. Thinking it might make me more competitive on college applications.
The best part was that I didn't have to do any programming. I would just hang out and eat pizza, while my friend did all the work. (Which he was cool with). Not a bad deal.
But, since we could take more people, I also invited another friend, Brandon, who didn't know how to program either. So our team consisted of one programmer, and two pizza eaters. Not bad. Not bad.
The night before the event, Brandon and I made a half-assed attempt at learning to program. He caught on quickly, but I was in over my head. So I gave up, remembering that it didn't matter if we won, placed, or showed ... I was getting pizza. So it was all good.
The day came and we made it to the U. Where we spent the first few hours hanging out in the computer lab, "programming" on some dusty old Unix computers. (Which I'm told is an awesome OS for servers, but all I remember is thinking how much it sucked for your average user ... me)
The contest consisted of five problems, which became logarithmically harder. Once you'd designed a program to perform whatever specific task the test asked for, you'd send it in--the computer would test it, and if it worked you got the points.
Matt worked frantically and solved three of them, the most difficult ones. And to Brandon's credit he was able to solve the easiest one on his own. And to my credit I managed to eat more pizza than both of them.
It was a team effort really.
We didn't win. But we did better than several schools. And we ate so much pizza.
And yes I did stamp "Participated in the state programming contest" on my college applications. But I don't think that bought me anything
(continuing the saga)
It was Junior year, and near the end. I was beginning to develop a taste for missing class (one that would grow exponentially in 12th grade) and so was always on the lookout for any opportunity to slip away from the dull, monotonic, boring lectures of school. And this is the tale of one such opportunity.
It was that time of year again, when my friend (who is a programming god) was going to enter the state highschool computer-programming contest. He would represent the school, compete for rank, eat unlimited pizza, and put some more flare on his resume. A pretty good gig.
The rules allowed only one team per school, and only four students per team. And since my friend had participated the year before--and no one else seemed to know about this event, I invited myself along as a member of the team. Even though I couldn't program to save my life.
I wanted the pizza.
I wanted the excused absence.
And I wanted some padding for the old resume. Thinking it might make me more competitive on college applications.
The best part was that I didn't have to do any programming. I would just hang out and eat pizza, while my friend did all the work. (Which he was cool with). Not a bad deal.
But, since we could take more people, I also invited another friend, Brandon, who didn't know how to program either. So our team consisted of one programmer, and two pizza eaters. Not bad. Not bad.
The night before the event, Brandon and I made a half-assed attempt at learning to program. He caught on quickly, but I was in over my head. So I gave up, remembering that it didn't matter if we won, placed, or showed ... I was getting pizza. So it was all good.
The day came and we made it to the U. Where we spent the first few hours hanging out in the computer lab, "programming" on some dusty old Unix computers. (Which I'm told is an awesome OS for servers, but all I remember is thinking how much it sucked for your average user ... me)
The contest consisted of five problems, which became logarithmically harder. Once you'd designed a program to perform whatever specific task the test asked for, you'd send it in--the computer would test it, and if it worked you got the points.
Matt worked frantically and solved three of them, the most difficult ones. And to Brandon's credit he was able to solve the easiest one on his own. And to my credit I managed to eat more pizza than both of them.
It was a team effort really.
We didn't win. But we did better than several schools. And we ate so much pizza.
And yes I did stamp "Participated in the state programming contest" on my college applications. But I don't think that bought me anything
