MEET THE TEAMS OF 2020
Team name: Runespoor
Institution: Zhejiang University
Coach: Can Wang
1. At what age(s) did you begin programming?
Two of us started before high school, and the rest one started from university.
2. How many teams have you (Coach) brought to the World Finals?
Starting from 2005, the year I became the coach for ICPC teams in Zhejiang University, we have advanced to the ICPC World Final for 15 consecutive years. That means I have brought 15 teams to the World Finals.
3. Is there a strategy or lesson your team has learned that increased your success?
It is common to encounter problems that is not so hard (according to the ranking) but we stuck on in the contest and this may be attributed to many reasons, such as adopting a much more difficult solution than necessary or just fail to locate the inconspicuous mistakes in our code. To reduce negative impact on the whole contest, we usually temporarily give up the problem, and come back to it near the end of the contest (like after the ranking is blocked). This way, we can keep our pace as usual and prevent our team from breaking down even in the worst case.
4. How did you come up with your team name?
Runespoor is a magical three-headed snake in the wizarding world of Harry Potter. According to writings from Parselmouths, each of the Runespoor’s heads serves a different function. The left head (from the perspective of someone facing the snake) is the planner and it decides where the Runespoor is to go and what it is to do next. The middle head is the dreamer (it is common for a Runespoor to remain stationary for days lost in glorious visions and imaginations), and the right head is the critic; it evaluates the efforts of the left and middle heads with a continuous irritable hissing, and its fangs are highly venomous. It is common to see Runespoor with the right head missing, as the other two heads often band together to bite it off when it criticizes them too much.
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