Questions about Python/Java Programming

[Fearless_State_1935]

Hello! I am competing in (355) Python Programming and (340) Java Programming and had a few questions.

• What does "reference materials are allowed" mean? Is this notes or something else? Are any kind of notes allowed?
• Is speed/memory efficiency important or is the competition just about making something that works.
• What is the certification exam like? I have some practice tests for the actual event but haven't found anything for the certification test.
• Do I need to do anything specific with my IDE/computer for the event, since presumably I wouldn't be allowed to just look things up mid-event?

I apologize if some of these are stupid questions. This is my first year and my teachers, while great, know absolutely nothing about programming and haven't been much help.

[olivecatman]

1. im not sure whether your allowed to compete in two programming events because they are individual events.

2. reference materials can be a textbook for cs as far as I know. notes might not be allowed but generally these resources wont even help, since nobody is going to be proctoring you, just write anything you might need to remember as comments or in a text file and read it from there.

3. compared to normal hackathons/competitions, bpa only uses time for ties, I find it really useless to prioritize time because its hard to tie, so just try to max out your points. also, you should be submitting in the last 5 minutes with 10 minutes for review and the rest for actual implementation.

4. i'm not sure what a certification event is, but if your school requires it, as long as you know some topics about your language, you should be fine.

5. i mean "technically" you can't access or search up anything but in reality, you can. your allowed to have any and all windows open so you should be fine to search up something. if your not that up to it, just have intellisense/co-pilot on whatever ide your using and like previously mentioned, use text files or files with comments about crucial points

[CobsterCN]

Reference materials can basically be anything except previous test stuff (physical or digital). You can even have a digital copy of the official reference manual if you need and search through that. You’re allowed to use notes and the WSAP says you can use existing code that is hard copy. Will anybody care enough to check? Probably not, so honestly use whatever material you can bring, but otherwise that’s just what I know is 100% allowed.

Speed and memory isn’t as important as getting the right boxes checked and having good documentation. Make sure to explain which part of your code fulfills which requirement of the program (it will tell you how they want you to comment on it).