IEEE Xtreme 5.0 – [Thankyou Post]

Whole Post in 1-Line: IEEE Xtreme makes me a better programmer PERIOD.

I have been a student member of IEEE for about 2 years now and for these 2 years I tried to participate in as many IEEE related activities as I could the best thing that happened participating in IEEE Xtreme competitions. IEEE Xtreme is a 24-hour worldwide online programming competition in which teams of upto 3 IEEE members can particiapte. The first programming competition that I ever participated in; more details here: Official Page of IEEE Xtreme.

[UPDATE: IEEE Xtreme 6.0 Questions posted – 30th Nov 2012]

I have always been fascinated by what software can do and I have been up and and about in learning to code whenever I got the chance, be it GWBASIC in school or C during my college days. I thought I was good at programming when I completed almost all exercises of the books usually taught in programming courses BUT IEEE Xtreme 4.0 opened my eyes to the brutal reality that I didn’t knew anything about what actual programming means.

Programming has more to do with problem solving than knowing how to code, you need to have a good grasp of mathematics, a good enough logical mind and patience to work out a solution in your mind before even thinking about typing the code. I along with my team members (Nasir Jumani and Sameed Tehami) we couldn’t even solve a single problem in the whole 24-hours in our first attempt, but after IEEE Xtreme 4.0 I went back to the books and started to learn what I didn’t knew, a whole year passed and then came IEEE Xtreme 5.0, before the competition I told my team mates;

We will solve at-least one problem this year; Insha Allah (God willing).

The day came and we started from the first hour uptill the end of the competition, we had worked on as many as 6 problems out of the 15 and were able to successfully get 2 of our solutions accepted by the automated MOOSHAK system, actually those 6 were the only ones that we were able to understand.

Now the results are in; we stand at 547th position worldwide out of 1515 teams. We are 6th in Pakistan and very proudly[and somewhat shockingly] 1st from Karachi. Congratulations to all of the Winners of the competition. Specially many many congratulations to the teams from Pakistan (especially Lahore) who have ranked head-to-head with the International participants.

• LumsMSA and BugSprayInc from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)
• SmartWarriors and ExpeditiousTrio08 from Lahore University of Management Sciences

I am thankful to our proctor Engr. Ashab Mirza for being there for us, IEEE IIEE SB, IEEE Karachi Section and IEEE Xtreme Team for arranging such a huge event.