Frequently Asked Questions About The IEEEXtreme Contest

Do all the team members have to be IEEE members?

Do all the members of the Proctoring Team have to be IEEE members?

Can a Student Branch have more than one team?

Can I participate using any programming language?

Does IEEE Xtreme have anything to do with Extreme Programming?

I’ve heard the contest is pretty difficult and that a lot of people from later courses participate. I’m in my first years of university and don’t think I’m good enough. Should I participate?

What types of prizes are being offered?

Are there sample problems?

What is the Proctor expected to do during the 24 hours of the contest? Are students allowed to sleep?

Do all the team members have to be IEEE members?

Yes, all the members of a team have to be either Student Members or Graduate Student Members of the IEEE. This is also an opportunity to do promotion of the IEEE membership and help them join through http://www.ieee.org/join.

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Do all the members of the Proctoring Team have to be IEEE members?

No, you can have non-IEEE professors as part of the proctoring team, but we strongly recommend giving preference to IEEE members.

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Can a Student Branch have more than one team?

Yes, each Student Branch may have an unlimited number of teams, provided each one is made up of the proper number of student members and has a proctor.

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Can I participate using any programming language?

No, right now the languages supported are: C/C++ (using gcc), Java (using Sun’s JDK) and C# (using Mono).

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Does IEEE Xtreme have anything to do with Extreme Programming?

No, not really. Apart from the fact that we sound similar, there’s little in common: Extreme programming (or XP) is a software engineering methodology, we are a programming contest.

Of course, Teams are entitled to use any methodology they want to solve our problems: XP, Scrum, classic waterfall, cowboy programming, voodoo enchantments, or type away randomly until it compiles. Pretty much anything as long as it works correctly.

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I’ve heard the contest is pretty difficult and that a lot of people from later courses participate. I’m in my first years of university and don’t think I’m good enough. Should I participate?

Definitely, yes. For a start, being in a higher course does not mean you’re necessarily better at programming (sorry for all those graduate students out there but… it’s true). More importantly, this is all about the experience. IEEEXtreme is a lot of fun, and will help you face real-world problems that you may not see during college. Plus, I bet you’ll be surprised about the fact that you can actually solve most of these if you devote time enough. Consider it all part of a training.

Finally, to make your decision even simpler: this year we’ll be giving away some prizes at random, so ever participant has got the opportunity to win something (we all know the important thing is to take part but, at the same time, you can’t say no to anything free).

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What types of prizes are being offered?

The prizes so far include a trip to the first place winners' team to the IEEE event of their choice. With hundreds of conferences and meetings every year, the winners are sure to find one that interests them. Runner-up prizes include cool geek items, certificates of participation, as well as recognition on the IEEE web site and in IEEE Potentials magazine.

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Are there sample problems?

A few sample problems from the first edition of IEEEXtreme are now available.

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What is the Proctor expected to do during the 24 hours of the contest? Are students allowed to sleep?

The Proctor should just make sure that it is the team members working on the problems, helping to ensure that they are comfortable, getting food and water and some exercise during the 24 hours and the main goal is for the participants to have fun. The students do not have to be isolated.

Sleep is part of making sure the team members are comfortable. The team members can alternate getting some sleep and we are not restricting where that has to take place. There may be some surprises, about every 6-8 hours, so it is important to keep monitoring the contest.

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