In July, the South African team of four learners should have been in Singapore for the world’s top coding contest for schools. However, as Covid-19 spread across the world, the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) was postponed to September and run online.
The team earned two bronze medals, bringing the total to 58 IOI medals for the country since 1992, including four gold and 13 silver.
Aaron Naidu of Eden College in KwaZulu-Natal and Andi Qu of St John’s College in Gauteng earned the coveted medals, but they will have to wait nine months to receive them. The 2021 SA team will receive the 2020 medals on their behalf at next year’s IOI – as well as any medals they earn themselves.
The 2020 online IOI was hosted at Stellenbosch University for three of the contestants while Aaron took part from his home in Durban. Because cheating is always a concern, the programs of all contestants were collected to review for plagiarism and irregularities. The invigilators at the two venues were Michael Cameron, manager of the SA Computer Olympiad and Emeritus Professor Poohbalan Pillay of UKZN. In case of any queries, 20 hours of video were recorded at both venues.
As one former organiser remarked, the online contest was ‘super smooth’. The Olympiad ran from Singapore at the same time worldwide. The organisers met at 06h00 (South African time), then followed translation for four hours for non-English speaking countries. For countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, the five-hour contests started at lunch time on the two days. Participants in Australia were not so fortunate – for them the contests ran beyond midnight, while the US team had to start around 04h00.
The final date was chosen to dovetail with International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO). This was because many of the top young programmers in their countries are also high-fliers in mathematics. One member of the South African IOI team, Andi Qu, finished coding for the IOI on the Saturday and then wrote the two four-and-a-half hour mathematics papers on the Monday and Tuesday, achieving a medal in both fields – coding and mathematics.
Andi Qu is in Gr 12 at St John’s College, Johannesburg. The other three are currently in their first year at different universities. Aaron Naidu of Eden College is at the University of KwaZulu-Natal; Adri Wessels of Curro Durbanville is at the Stellenbosch University; and M Taariq Mowzer of Fairbairn College is at the University of Cape Town.
The C++ programming language was overwhelmingly popular among the 343 contestants from 87 countries. Java was only used by four contestants, and will be dropped from the IOI for 2021.
Next year the IOI will be held in late June (20 to 27 June). It takes four years for the host country to prepare for the IOI. As late as April 2020, Singapore was still preparing to welcome the IOI teams to its shores. By June the whole world was reeling from rising infections and deaths. Reluctantly the decision was made to hold the entire contest online.
For the contestants there would be no face-to-face meetings with like-minded coders from across the globe. For the host country all arrangements, such as accommodation and tour bookings, for the 600 visitors just fell away. Just when it seemed the years of preparation would be lost, the 2021 IOI host, Egypt, offered their place to Singapore. Egypt will now host the IOI in 2024.
South African Computer Olympiad
This year the Computer Olympiad Board kept up the momentum of its national Olympiads for schools. Numbers were down but both contests afforded opportunities to learners to participate. Instead of the finals being at one national venue and ending with a gala dinner, they were held online at provincial venues with the announcement of results via Zoom.
Next year (2021) the South African Computer Olympiad office will be in Gauteng but, as before, all South African schools will be invited to participate. Details at www.olympiad.org.za