Young SA learner surprises Computer Olympiad organisers

WTF?

In my day when you did this stuff you actually had to code something...now you just use some office apps?

How is that even related to Computer Science? EVERY person should know how to use bloody office.

****

I remember being Std 8 and competing in those and then placing 2nd in the school right behind the super special 103% oke that was in Matric. He hated my guts for levelling out to him and being younger for it.

And then I started to hate coding soon after...because it was all paper based....and I wanted to work with computers...not paper.
 
PsyWulf said:
Idd,this looks like some derpy applause for kids who can use an office package,bright future in Secretary School there
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I was going to with "Yay, now retards can get awards too" but your statement will suffice.
 
The Applications Olympiad is a challenge for those who take Computer Application Technology at school – a subject which is only offered to Grade 10, 11 and 12 learners.
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Why was I only asked to do one in gr.12?
 
stixx said:
I loved olympiads (not only the IT olympiad) in school, they really separated the naturally clever people from those who just study hard and get good marks.
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That's what you think. There is a reason why people that do extremely well (i.e. make it to international level in olympiads) tend to come from the same wealthy schools. A lot of those schools had extra classes to drill olympiad-style questions into their students. While you, the naturally smart person, waste time figuring out questions other people are already familiar with the underlying logic of common questions, got a few pointers from their teachers etc.

Not just for science olympiads too, even ones like English had classes to improve writing style, choice of diction etc to olympiad level, specifically preparing as many students from their school to nail olympiads. Ultimately a lot more of those students make it further than those who just depend on their intelligence.
 
I'm happy for the kid, everyone needs some motivation for their work once in a while.
 
I took CAT in school (only because we didn't have IT as an option).

I think the exemption from CIL in my first year at Tuks and the fact I use excel every day of my life means it wasn't all that bad an idea to take as some nubs would think.
 
Knyro said:
That's what you think. There is a reason why people that do extremely well (i.e. make it to international level in olympiads) tend to come from the same wealthy schools.
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As someone who has been to the ZA computer programming Olympiad final twice (quite a while ago :) ), and won once, I can say I never saw this at all. In both years, there were only 2 or 3 out of 10 from "rich" schools. In my experience, self-taught and self-motivated students tend to do best in Olympiads as free-form problem solving really does favour natural aptitude.

Of course, it's possible the programming Olympiad's standards have dropped over the years, and if you can indeed game the system then it's turned in to a crap competition.

This carries on later in life - we set oldskool Olympiad-style tests for coders who want to work at my company and it weeds out the naturals from the ones who try and prepare for it.
 
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elvis_presley said:
As someone who has been to the ZA computer programming Olympiad final twice (quite a while ago :) ), and won once, I can say I never saw this at all. In both years, there were only 2 or 3 out of 10 from "rich" schools. In my experience, self-taught and self-motivated students tend to do best in Olympiads as free-form problem solving really does favour natural aptitude.

Of course, it's possible the programming Olympiad's standards have dropped over the years, and if you can indeed game the system then it's turned in to a crap competition.

This carries on later in life - we set oldskool Olympiad-style tests for coders who want to work at my company and it weeds out the naturals from the ones who try and prepare for it.
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I don't know about rich schools but there are indeed ones better equipped for it. I got 85% on my test questions. Just afterwards it hit me about recursion which was the only practical way to solve it. We were on Pascal which is not very at home with recursion compared to a language such as C. Teacher was a Pascal programmer (not developer) and no C compiler. So kinda stuck with something that wasn't really suited for the job.
 
elvis_presley said:
As someone who has been to the ZA computer programming Olympiad final twice (quite a while ago :) ), and won once, I can say I never saw this at all. In both years, there were only 2 or 3 out of 10 from "rich" schools. In my experience, self-taught and self-motivated students tend to do best in Olympiads as free-form problem solving really does favour natural aptitude.

Of course, it's possible the programming Olympiad's standards have dropped over the years, and if you can indeed game the system then it's turned in to a crap competition.

This carries on later in life - we set oldskool Olympiad-style tests for coders who want to work at my company and it weeds out the naturals from the ones who try and prepare for it.
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Also, most of the finalists seem to have done exceptionally well for themselves - at least two of the better ones got PhDs, and some have gone to companies like Google, ARM, NVIDIA, Amazon, DE Shaw, etc. I don't think that was just from Olympiad question style training.
 
Wtf, is this another Olympiad for CAT students? When I was in school it was purely problem solving/programming. There was a genius guy at my school that would nail every problem every time and I remember once he even corrected the model answer. He also did University first year maths in school. In first year his applied math and 2nd year math exams were at the same time, he wrote one, finished, wrote the other, got over 100% for both. Last I heard he was busy with a PhD.
 
"13 finalists" but 15 names in the table. Am I counting incorrectly, reading incorrectly, or is this a mistake in the article?
 
There's quite a lot of negativity towards the competition, and if the grade 9'er is reading this thread, shame. Yes, this wasn't the programming olympiad, but a gr9 taking on gr12's and beating them in any kind of activity is a good thing, kudos to him.

I checked out some of the past papers for this competition, and while they start off slowly, the excel ones are actually quite relevant; half the accountants I've worked with couldn't do it, where it should be part of their jobs.
 
best of the worst... Anyone can do this, honestly.
Some of us spent our time programming from grade 8 rather then going to run in Paralympics.

CAT is the ideal way to say I am too lazy to take IT (unless you don't have the choice to take IT because teachers capable of passing first year computer science is non existent).
 
Ipwn 4 said:
best of the worst... Anyone can do this, honestly.
Some of us spent our time programming from grade 8 rather then going to run in Paralympics.

CAT is the ideal way to say I am too lazy to take IT (unless you don't have the choice to take IT because teachers capable of passing first year computer science is non existent).
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People equate CAT and IT to Maths lit and Maths, which it isn't.

I'm sure to teach IT, teachers would have done a comp sci module I know my teacher majored in comp sci and app math.
 
DA-LION-619 said:
People equate CAT and IT to Maths lit and Maths, which it isn't.

I'm sure to teach IT, teachers would have done a comp sci module I know my teacher majored in comp sci and app math.
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Yes. I have to do computer science to be qualified to teach IT.
 
elvis_presley said:
There's quite a lot of negativity towards the competition, and if the grade 9'er is reading this thread, shame. Yes, this wasn't the programming olympiad, but a gr9 taking on gr12's and beating them in any kind of activity is a good thing, kudos to him.

I checked out some of the past papers for this competition, and while they start off slowly, the excel ones are actually quite relevant; half the accountants I've worked with couldn't do it, where it should be part of their jobs.
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Kudos yes. Newsworthy? Area newspaper at best in the scholastic section next to kids drawings and the newly appointed leaders
 
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