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Hey Teamliquid,
This is my first blog post, so forgive me if I'm not conforming to any rules in the blog section.
My first question is about the US Chemistry Olympiad tests. Has anyone on Teamliquid ever studied for the tests in an attempt to qualify for the team? If so, I'm wondering how I should be going about preparing for this and if there's anything I should know. My school district is highly competitive (one of the two high schools in my district alone had 13 people accepted into Princeton this year), and only two people per school are invited to take the national exam every year, which sorta makes me nervous heh  .
I'm just going into 9th grade and I've studied chemistry from textbooks that my brother had when he was in high school. I've also taken the year 2000 and 2001 local exams for this test, scoring a 39 and a 45 respectively. Now I'm going through this large book from Schaum's, consisting of "3000 solved problems in Chemistry" in an attempt to "mass-problems".
Any advice is much appreciated.
Because I have so much time this summer aside from studying chemistry and doing the various schoolwork, I would like to learn computer programming. Browsing through old threads in TL I found out about the IOI, the International Olympiad in Informatics. Because I always had an interest in computer programming but never thought it would have much use, I sort of put it off. Now, however, it seems like the time is right to learn something, and programming seems to fit the bill.
My question is, how should I go about learning programming?
My brother took computer science courses for two years in college, and he has always tried to get me to learn some programming. When I asked him about it yesterday about which language I should start off in, he recommended I partition my hard drive and dual-boot Linux and learn C, so that I can eventually convert to C++. Another option is to learn programming with Java. Which would be a better choice? Keep in mind I have 2-5 hours a day I could put into learning programming.
After I choose a language, I honestly have no clue how I'm going to go about learning it. Should I look for books, or should I just use online tutorials?
Thank you for your time and answers!
Edit: Bolded some parts that are the most important if you're just skimming lol
Edit2: In retrospect it probably would've been smarter to make the title "Computer Programming and Chemistry Olympiad" considering the demographic of people on Teamliquid
 
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Learn programming by making random projects for yourself and learning along the way.
Books for background/basis until you are familiarish with things, then books for side reading and google to guide the way.
Screw C. Learn Java or C#. Learn Python, PHP, or Ruby for scripting as well, Python if you give no shits about making websites (people tend to use PHP/Ruby for that). Or, if you are a WoW whore and want to make addons too, use Lua.
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If you want to be an implementation jockey and just create cool programs and stuff learn Java or C#, the easier languages.
If you care about theory (algorithms, turing machines, automatas, math, problem solving) go to school for it or watch MIT open courseware.
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My brother took computer science courses for two years in college, and he has always tried to get me to learn some programming. When I asked him about it yesterday about which language I should start off in, he recommended I partition my hard drive and dual-boot Linux and learn C, so that I can eventually convert to C++.
that's really bad advice... you don't need linux to learn programming and learning C is not a good idea. If it's only recreational C# or Java is your best bet, if you want to do more complex stuff,learn memory management etc. learn C++
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I've been to the ACM world finals and done heaps of other IOI type competitions.
If you're going into competitive programming you want to learn C. C++ has some useful additions that eventually make things easier, but you don't need them right away. Java is also ok but it's a slight disadvantage due to speed, it's not as easy to do simple things like input, and it's fairly similar to C anyway. Other languages are generally not allowed in competitions.
Learning Linux is good, you could also install cygwin and get the linux shell + compilers from windows without having to reboot or stuff around with partitions. It's good to learn with the whole thing though. Alternatively, Dev-c++ is decent and easy to set up.
Good luck!
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If you want to do IOI I think C++ is your only (reasonable) option. Only c++, c, and pascal are allowed as far as I know, although I've only read about it.
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On June 25 2011 10:58 Yukidasu wrote:
I've been to the ACM world finals and done heaps of other IOI type competitions.
If you're going into competitive programming you want to learn C. C++ has some useful additions that eventually make things easier, but you don't need them right away. Java is also ok but it's a slight disadvantage due to speed, it's not as easy to do simple things like input, and it's fairly similar to C anyway. Other languages are generally not allowed in competitions.
Learning Linux is good, you could also install cygwin and get the linux shell + compilers from windows without having to reboot or stuff around with partitions. It's good to learn with the whole thing though. Alternatively, Dev-c++ is decent and easy to set up.
Good luck!
How do you propose I learn C? Should I find books?
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I took the chem olympiad one time like seven years ago. I don't remember specifics, but I remember nothing being out of reach for an AP chem student. Basically if you know your chemistry, you should be fine. The best way to practice for this type of test is to take a bunch of practice tests and study up on your weaknesses.
Because it's the chem olympiad, there's going to be some random knowledge questions which you cannot rely on always knowing the answer to. The best way to go about those is to make an educated guess based on periodic trends, etc. (Don't remember if they penalize for wrong answers).
Good luck
On June 25 2011 10:27 EtherealDeath wrote:
Learn programming by making random projects for yourself and learning along the way.
This is pretty much what you should do. I learned programming by making programs to do my math homework for me. Obviously go through a couple tutorials for basics, but then you should have a goal for each project (like automate a solution to a math problem) - and then solve it. You can't learn without doing random programming projects.
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I have learned C++ (By learned, I mean I've programmed with C++ for about a year. But you never really fully learn a language) and I would definitely recommend it, its a great language to start with as it lets you touch on a little of everything, and is fairly useful to know overall. C is also a good language to know, but its a bit of a pain. As for learning C or C++, a textbook wouldn't be a bad idea, but I don't think its totally necessary. A textbook is great to have for reference, but the internet is a much more useful tool. I would recommend trying out the MIT open coursework, and finding a decent professor's online notes. Those would be good staples to learn whats going on, and then use online references such as cplusplus.com.
Programming is a cool subject because everything you learn, you can actually do, and put it to good use. Thus the best way to learn programming, is to program. Just find a bunch of projects a professor posted online, and try it out.
As for using linux just to learn programming, while it is useful, I don't think its totally necessary. You won't really tap into the advantages of linux until you are an experienced programmer, windows or mac os will do fine until then.
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Wow if you're starting on chemistry this early, surely you'll be able to make the top four team in two years or even next year (not that many people compete in chem). From what I've heard, just work through some good textbooks carefully.
For IOI, I never did it but I think you need to learn graph theory and algorithms.
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On June 25 2011 11:07 XXGeneration wrote:How do you propose I learn C? Should I find books?
It depends. If you haven't programmed much before, a lot of what you'll learn is how to think about things formally, which applies to any language. You'll learn that with any good book, but I'd recommend learning with specific goals (I want to solve this problem!). I'd say get on to train.usaco.org as soon as you know the basics and just work on things. You can probably find basic tutorials online.
Feel free to pm me if there's anything specific you want to ask 
edit: Chimpalimp makes some great suggestions.
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I learned C and C++ by messing around with text games, or Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs). I pretty much just taught myself, although I don't know if I would suggest this in that most of the text games out today probably aren't the best written forms and you'll probably learn bad habits. I've been programming on a game since 2004, but it's definitely fun and interesting.
But for me, it's all recreational, I never meant for it to be a job, just a hobby.
I'm not sure what your wants are for it.
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If you're going to learn from in an unstructured setting, C and C++ would be horrible choices. It's ridiculously common to come across bad practices in these languages, and unless you have a guide attempting to learn them will only hinder your programming knowledge. Besides, they are both uninspiring languages to beginners (apart from the fact that so many popular programs are written using them).
Java would be a significantly better language to learn. Speed is not an issue because:
1) Java is nearly as fast (and faster in certain cases) as C++.
2) Java is safer than C and C++, which makes speedy debugging (ie. within time limited contests) more doable.
3) In programming contests, it's often only the asymptotic behaviour (or at least some large constant based on your algorithm's implementation) that matters.
Better than Java, would be to learn Python, which is more likely to be benefitial to your programming skills. It is also great for writing contests with more flexible math functions and rapid prototyping. There exists a great knowledge base for it as well.
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Google has great courses on Python and C++
http://code.google.com/edu/languages/index.html
2-5 hours is more than enough to learn programming, but IMO learning a language because of a project you have in mind > learning the language just for kicks.
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Not to intentionally be a wet blanket, but casually learning computer programming with the hopes of entering IOI is a far-fetched dream. IIRC, only high school students are allowed to enter the IOI, which gives you 3 or 4(?) years to fully master programming AND learn advanced mathematics (relative to high school standards). Among my friends, the only ones who got into IOI were those who had intensively studied programming and mathematics for about 4 to 5 years before getting a chance to enter the Olympiad. Thus, unless you are a genius with IQ of over 180 or something, choose either the chemistry or informatics Olympiad, and dedicate yourself to it fully.
As others have already said, C++ is the most universally accepted algorithmic language at this level. It may help to have some experience with C, but learning C++ from the get-go shouldn't be a problem. However, remember that the programming language is only a tool to process your ideas. What distinguishes mediocre programmers from the best is their problem-solving ability. Ultimately, IOI is a test of your mathematical and logical skills in solving questions. Fluency with programming language can improve your efficiency and allow you to write a more elegant solution, but without the ability to solve questions, programming skills are useless. For example, look at these past paper questions:
Flood (IOI 07)
Sails (IOI 07)
There is almost no aspect of programming being tested in the problem, and an intelligent person without any experience in programming could probably solve it. If you still want to participate in an informatics competition after all that I've blabbered on about, good luck and remember to hone your problem solving skills (try doing those two examples!)
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Don't you be a pussy and start with Python or Java, that hide the more complex stuff from you. Starting with C and moving on to C++ will help you understand computers better and once you know C++, you can pick up most of the other languages easily. You could start straight with C++ aswell, there's a great free book with sample code: "Thinking in C++" by Bruce Eckel. http://mindview.net/Books/TICPP/ThinkingInCPP2e.html
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If you're completely on top of everything you can learn in AP chemistry, most of the Chemistry Olympiad shouldn't be a problem. If you know everything, you'll get every problem right (right?) Then again, if you you don't get some of the stuff, you shouldn't be taking it.
They do have some content that is not in AP chemistry (maybe 5%). That includes some Organic Chemistry and something else, which I thought was kind of unfair... But you can still do well enough.
In my opinion, the hard part of making the team is the lab portions in the later rounds.
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On June 25 2011 13:11 Vinnesta wrote:
There is almost no aspect of programming being tested in the problem, and an intelligent person without any experience in programming could probably solve it. If you still want to participate in an informatics competition after all that I've blabbered on about, good luck and remember to hone your problem solving skills (try doing those two examples!)
That's not completely true, the sails problem requires use of some fairly complex data structures if you want to solve it completely (with their time/memory limits) In general, for these competitions there's a repertoire of algorithms that you'll need to learn and remember - and more importantly, remember how to code within the contest time. So although the code required isn't complex from a language feature point of view, it's still pretty intricate and requires a fair amount of practice.
Most IOI problems can be solved with less than 100 lines of code, so yes, programming skill is definitely not the limiting factor. If you're serious about practicing for these competitions, it's essential to practice all the various types of problems that can show up - a poster above mentioned train.usaco.org, and that's probably the best place to go first. You should try some of those problems and see if you're still interested before pursuing it any further (as it really takes a lot of dedication and practice if you want to qualify, especially for the US team)
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On June 25 2011 10:10 XXGeneration wrote:
I'm just going into 9th grade and I've studied chemistry from textbooks that my brother had when he was in high school. I've also taken the year 2000 and 2001 local exams for this test, scoring a 39 and a 45 respectively. Now I'm going through this large book from Schaum's, consisting of "3000 solved problems in Chemistry" in an attempt to "mass-problems".
Any advice is much appreciated.
That's a LOT of solved problems. I'm not sure if "solved" problems should be the ones you're looking for. Yeah, you can check your work and see if it's right, but you gain no confidence in solving a problem when you can't check and see if it's right. It's much more valuable to learn how to think, so if you MUST used the solved problems make sure you do a bunch of them and talk over the theory and problem-solving before you check your work.
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On June 25 2011 13:51 roflpie wrote:Don't you be a pussy and start with Python or Java, that hide the more complex stuff from you. Starting with C and moving on to C++ will help you understand computers better and once you know C++, you can pick up most of the other languages easily. You could start straight with C++ aswell, there's a great free book with sample code: "Thinking in C++" by Bruce Eckel. http://mindview.net/Books/TICPP/ThinkingInCPP2e.html
Typical of beginner C++ programmers to think that complexity is a measure of the depth of a language. You don't gain nearly as much understanding (of computers, algorithms, or programming) by learning the 50000 quirks of your language as you would by learning 2 or 3 vastly different (and simpler, more elegant) languages or by studying a good algorithms book.
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Well, having read the suggested exercises above I would suggest you start with Matlab. It's easy to learn and it is very popular among scientists and engineers. It includes a lot of packages such as linear algebra, tools for solving differential equations, random number generators etc. that requires somewhat more skill in especially C/C++ to make it work.
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Python should be your first.
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On June 25 2011 11:33 blankspace wrote:
Wow if you're starting on chemistry this early, surely you'll be able to make the top four team in two years or even next year (not that many people compete in chem). From what I've heard, just work through some good textbooks carefully.
Haha I hope so. It also helps that both my parents are chemists, but it's still a long road from here
On June 25 2011 11:28 Chimpalimp wrote:
I have learned C++ (By learned, I mean I've programmed with C++ for about a year. But you never really fully learn a language) and I would definitely recommend it, its a great language to start with as it lets you touch on a little of everything, and is fairly useful to know overall. C is also a good language to know, but its a bit of a pain. As for learning C or C++, a textbook wouldn't be a bad idea, but I don't think its totally necessary. A textbook is great to have for reference, but the internet is a much more useful tool. I would recommend trying out the MIT open coursework, and finding a decent professor's online notes. Those would be good staples to learn whats going on, and then use online references such as cplusplus.com.
Programming is a cool subject because everything you learn, you can actually do, and put it to good use. Thus the best way to learn programming, is to program. Just find a bunch of projects a professor posted online, and try it out.
As for using linux just to learn programming, while it is useful, I don't think its totally necessary. You won't really tap into the advantages of linux until you are an experienced programmer, windows or mac os will do fine until then.
This is interesting; my brother says that C++ would be very hard to start out with.
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For everyone who is wondering, I want to learn programming because it has always interested me, not because I want to pad my college application or something. My brother has always tried to convince me to try learning, but I always put it off because of time constraints.
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EPT
