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Dr. Frank Klassner and several of his computing sciences students now have their Friday afternoons back. At least for a little while.

Since the beginning of the semester, Klassner and nine students worked vigorously to prepare for the regional round of the Association for Computer Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest, held Nov. 8 in Wilkes Barre.

According to Klassner, the Villanova teams practiced an average of two hours a week, usually after classes ended on Friday afternoons. While other students were busy making weekend plans and relaxing, Klassner and the nine competitors spent hours in the computing sciences rooms in Mendel, discussing strategies and participating in practice rounds.

The ACM ICPC is the oldest, largest and most prestigious worldwide computer programming contest. The New York Times referred to the contest as a “semester’s worth of problem solving crammed into one morning.”

Villanova sent three teams of three to the regional contest, vying for the top spots in order to qualify for the international round held in Prague in March. The three University teams placed 68th, 72nd and 102nd out of 160 teams from the Mid-Atlantic region.

While the results were somewhat disappointing, Klassner looks forward to a year of practicing and improvement for next year’s contest. “We had an off year this year,” he said. “We’ll be returning to next year’s competition with just two veterans, so we’ll expect an earnest rebuilding effort.”

Sponsored by IBM, the contest draws tens of thousands of college participants from 68 countries around the world. Working in teams of three, students faced the challenge of solving six to eight real-world programming problems within five hours.

Many members of the Villanova team attributed their participation to an overall interest in the competition itself. “I thought it was a neat idea,” J.J. Chojnowski,’04, said. “The problems used from previous years got me interested in becoming involved with the competition.”

The ACM ICPC contest was established almost 30 years ago, tracing its roots to a 1970 competition at Texas A&M University. Since IBM became its primary sponsor in 1997, contest membership has more than quadrupled.

Computer softwares Linux and Eclipse provide the background for the contest programming environment under an open source paradigm at the world finals.

More than 3,000 teams participated in the preliminary rounds and 72 teams were selected to compete at the 2004 World Finals.

The problems are designed to test not only programming skill, but also creativity and teamwork. Championship status is awarded to the first team that solves the most problems correctly in the least amount of time.

According to the official ACM fact sheet, “judging is relentlessly strict. The students are given a problem statement – not a requirements document. They are given an example of test data, but they do not have access to the judges’ test data and acceptance criteria. Each incorrect solution submitted is assessed a time penalty. The team that solves the most problems, in the fewest attempts, in the least cumulative time is declared the winner.