MIRI: The Curtin Programming Nation Club, a student-run computer programming club affiliated with the Faculty of Engineering and Science at Curtin University Malaysia (Curtin Malaysia), recently organised its third annual programming competition.
Foad Motalebi, a lecturer in the faculty’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and club advisor said that programming is present in every field and has become an indispensable skill, especially for engineering students.
He added that an important aspect of being an engineer today is learning how to codify and this can be helpful in solving basic engineering problems and running simulations.
Thus, organising a programming competition annually enables students to engage in healthy competition and demonstrate their programming skills.
“Each year, we witness very keen competition among the students, who see the competition as an opportunity to sharpen both their programming and problem-solving skills,” said Foad.
He noted the competition has seen the number of participants increasing each year, with this year’s competition being the largest with 34.
To accommodate all of them, two computer laboratories had to be used for the first time.
The competition pitted the participants against each other in a three-hour programming marathon to see who could solve a series of programming questions using C, C++ or Java programming languages in the fastest time possible.
The 10 questions put before them had varying difficulty levels ranging from easy to advanced. As an open book competition, the participants could refer to any online source to help them solve the questions.
The questions were designed by Foad, senior lecturer Terence Tan, Master of Philosophy (MPhil) student and Curtin Programming Nation Club president Kueh Reng Yi, and electrical and electronic engineering student Solomon Haw Wei Wern.
Electrical and electronic engineering student Lim Jian Wei came up top in the competition, followed by computing student Teoh Yuan Ju and MPhil student Terence Chia Yi Kai in third place.
Lim received a RM500 cash prize while Teoh and Chia won RM250 and RM100 respectively.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering head associate professor Lenin Gopal presented the prizes.
