Hi,

International Olympiad in Informatics
allows only c++ and free pascal.

Provided editors : ... lazarus ...

http://www.ioi2009.org/index.jsp;jsessionid=F84941DF0A0EE4138BC2E44BA6DBE5EB?ln=2&id=361

regards,

Den Jean

Does anybody know who is pushing FPC in the IOI?

Tom Verhoef is IOI secretary iirc.

I was on the Host Technical Committee:

http://www.ioi2009.org/index.jsp?id=408&ln=2

where I helped with the Pascal support (install & configuration of fpc and lazarus on the contest linux distro, etc.). I also did a Pascal to C translation of one of the authors' solutions of one of the hardest tasks in order to help determine the time limits for the task, so that it is possible to score 100 points on the task with Pascal. Surprisingly, the Pascal program ran exactly as fast as the C program (the difference was really really minimal and it was slightly slower on some tests, but slightly faster on others).

And here's the kicker: the winner - Henadzi Karatkevich (who is only 14-years old!!!) from Belarus used Pascal to solve the tasks!

http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/08/15/1523255/14-Year-Old-Wins-International-Programming-Contest?from=rss

Nikolay Nikolov wrote

I also did a Pascal to C translation of one of the authors' solutions ...

Sorry, this should be "C to Pascal translation", of course. :)

Thank you for your work to promote FPC :)

Not in the news though ;(

http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/08/15/1523255/14-Year-Old-Wins-International-Programming-Contest?from=rss

Florian Klaempfl wrote

> And here's the kicker: the winner - Henadzi Karatkevich (who is only > 14-years old!!!) from Belarus used Pascal to solve the tasks! Not in the news though ;(

It was through that news I discovered it,
other readers may as well ...

P.S. Guilty on the account of reading /.

Saw that it was posted in latest news on the free pascal site. :) Just noticed a small typo - his name should be Henadzi - with a 'z'.

My apologies for the late response. I only got to catch up on Lazarus mail after the summer just now.

To set the record straight: I no longer run the so-called IOI Secretariat. For the IOI, see <http://www.IOInformatics.org/>. In fact, I am no longer actively involved in the IOI.

Pascal has traditionally been allowed on the IOI from the very beginning in 1989, together with C. Later, Basic, Logo, and even FORTRAN appeared, but also disappeared again as IOI programming language. Today, C++ is also available, but Java is not (yet).

Pascal support started with Turbo Pascal, until we moved to Linux servers for the automatic grading in 2001. At that time we switched to FreePascal (version 1.0.4 to be precise). Because FreePascal is such a solid compiler with tremendous support, we have stayed with FPC ever since. Contestants also like it, although there have always been controversies in the IOI community over the editor or IDE to use with FPC.

For more on the history of the IOI, see my article:

20 Years of IOI Competition Tasks
Olympiads in Informatics, 2009, Vol. 3, 149-166
<http://www.mii.lt/olympiads_in_informatics/pdf/INFOL047.pdf>

Best regards,

Tom Verhoeff

Nikolay Nikolov wrote

Saw that it was posted in latest news on the free pascal site. :) Just noticed a small typo - his name should be Henadzi - with a 'z'.

I do not understand why the IOI site used such a strange spelling. His name is actually "Genadii", (???????? in Cyrillic), as correctly spelled here:
http://ioi2009.org/downloads/br8-3str-en.pdf

BTW, I am trying to persuade the organizers of Russian Olympiad in Informatics to include Lazarus in the list of provided IDEs.
Any help with that would be greatly appreciated ;-)

Alexander Klenin wrote

BTW, I am trying to persuade the organizers of Russian Olympiad in Informatics to include Lazarus in the list of provided IDEs. Any help with that would be greatly appreciated ;-)

Mention that is available in the finals too:
http://www.ioi2009.org/index.jsp?ln=2&id=361

Vincent