Coding ‘Grand Prix’ in Baku
8 August 2019
The 2019 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is currently underway where hundreds of teen programmers compete for top honours at this prestigious international coding contest.
Each country sends four high school learners to the competition. There are 86 countries participating at this year’s Olympiad, held in Baku, Azerbaijan from 4-11 August.
Three of the four participants representing South Africa are from the Western Cape.
This year’s team from South Africa is Tian Cilliers (Stellenbosch High School), Ralph McDougall (Curro Durbanville), Taariq Mowzer (Fairbairn College), and Andi Qu, (St John’s College, Johannesburg).
On each of the two contest days, participants have five hours to program the solutions to three problems. The preparation of the team from South Africa included 50 hours of contest programming mainly using problems from thirty past IOI contests. University computer science and mathematics students, Robin Visser and Bronson Rudner, trained the team over five weekends. Both have been medal winners at past SA Programming Olympiads and have represented the country at previous IOI contests.
SA Computer Olympiad manager, Michael Cameron, said the opportunity to measure up against the best programmers in the world is important for South Africa.
“It is a yardstick for our capacity. Our schools need to rise to the challenge of preparing our learners to take their part in the digital revolution in Africa and beyond.”