The section that is dedicated to the annual APL Problem Solving Competition is always one of my own favourite parts of a Dyalog user meeting, and the talks by the two winners this year were no exception. It is always a treat to hear about how the student winners are able to go from zero knowledge about APL to delivering very well designed, array-oriented, solutions in a few weeks, sometimes days!
This year, we were very pleased to have both the student grand prize winner Andrea Piseri and the professional winner Alexander Block present. Andrea is studying mathematics at Università degli Studi di Milano (University of Milan) and Alexander is an actuary at the Viridium Insurance Group in Germany.
Before Gitte Christensen presented the prizes to the winners and they gave their talks, our “Chief Problem Maker” Brian Becker gave us a brief history of the competition and overview of the contest website (which uses Dyalog-grown tools). He also mentioned that we are revising the format of the competition, most likely by running simpler/smaller problem sets at a higher frequency. We’ll be making official announcements about that early in 2024.
Read more about this section of the user meeting in our Dyalog ’23 daily blog post.
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This week’s videos:
- D17: How I Won the APL Problem Solving Competition – Introduction and Prize Ceremony (Brian Becker)
- U13: How I Won the APL Problem Solving Competition – Non-student Winner (Alexander Block)
- U14: How I Won the APL Problem Solving Competition – Student Winner (Andrea Piseri)
Materials for all presentations can be downloaded from the Dyalog ’23 webpage.
