OP Computer Practice Session

Created by Dr. Robert Hasker

Getting Ready for OP!

  1. Review rules and instructions.
  2. Start your computer.
  3. Select your programming environment. IntelliJ is recommended for Java, but BlueJ, Eclipse, and command-line are also available; Microsoft Visual Studio is available for C++; and Anaconda and PyCharm are available for Python.
  4. Write a “HelloWorld” program in your selected environment. MSOE student volunteers will be available to help with this.
  5. The competition problems will require user input. Write a practice program that will prompt the user to enter a piece of data (string or number) and echo the entry back to the console. In Java, you would likely use the Scanner class for this. In C++, you would likely use std::cin. The practice solution must be named Practice.java, practice.cpp, or practice.py (as appropriate).
  6. Competition problems often require you to read data from a text file. If you have time, use your development environment to create a text file with your school name in it, then write a program to prompt the user for the name of a file, open the file, read every line from it, and display those lines on the screen.
  7. In your remaining time, get comfortable, and practice on these: Sample problems from 2003 competition (PDF)

Notes:

  • All file locations discussed in the instructions are recommendations, not requirements. You may set up the projects and files in any fashion you choose. The contents of your laptop are not visible to the judges. Only the source files that you submit via the scoring website will be used for evaluation.
  • Each team will use two laptops. While the laptops have access to the network for file submission, the laptops are not networked to each other. If you need to share files among the laptops, you will need to use a flash drive (not provided).
  • Be sure you use just two laptops, regardless of whether you are using the MSOE laptops or your own.
  • Note the tie-breaker is quality of solution. We have had several contests go to tie-breakers in the past few years!