Croatian team will take part in the grand finals in Thailand.
Foreign software companies know very well that Croatia has many successful young computer developers. Croatian students often win medals at international competitions and this year, for the third time in a row, a Croatian team managed to qualify for finals of the most prestigious and largest computer programming competition –ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), organized by IBM, reports Večernji List on May 8, 2016.
Among 40,000 participants from 2,700 universities in 102 countries, three students from Croatia – Tonko Sabolčec (19, Čakovec), Mihael Liskij (19, Zagreb) and Ivan Lazarić (20, Pula) won their place among 125 teams that will soon compete in the finals in Thailand (15 to 20 May). Their team was the youngest of six Croatian teams which took part at the Central European Regional Competition (held in Zagreb for the first time), where they won the sixth place, which was enough for them to enter the finals.
“Our Central European group is extremely strong, so this was only the fourth time in 20 years that a Croatian team managed to qualify for the finals. The tasks were very tough; our best team solved seven of the 12 tasks, while the winners from the University of Warsaw solved 10 tasks. It is a programming contest focused on the design and effective implementation of algorithms”, said professor Ante Đerek, one of the leaders of the team.
Although the students are in the middle of the exam season, the three of them are intensively preparing for the finals in Thailand and train at least 20 hours a week. To be successful, you need to be very good at math, a fast and skilled programmer, have good knowledge of algorithms, and be able to effectively work in a team under a lot of stress and time constraints.
As of yet, they are not thinking about the future and where they will end up in 10 years. “It is early too yet for thinking about startups or final decisions. We first have to get a diploma, but we are interested in internships”, say the students.
“There is currently a very high demand for developers in Croatia and in the world, and all students very quickly find a job. The best are regularly recruited by some of the world's greatest companies, and they can choose whether they want to go abroad or stay in Croatia. Lately, many decide to go abroad and they are usually very successful”, says Đerek.
