Another top spot win in the Entelect Challenge University Cup
The Entelect Challenge University Cup is a one-day hackathon where teams of students from various universities around the country are challenged to solve a coding problem. This year’s cup took place on 1 August and was hosted online by the participating universities.
UCT proudly secured the second and third places on the virtual podium as well, with “Snack Overflow” and “Chuma” being placed 2nd and 3rd respectively.
The team, comprising of Emile Tredoux, Andrew McGregor and Bronson Rudner, won a gaming laptop each and some interesting gadgets for UCT's lab. The winning team also received tickets to Comic Con Africa to attend the main Entelect Challenge final event.
McGregor and Rudner both completed their BSc degrees in mathematics and computer science last year. Tredoux is a second year student majoring in computer science.
“We entered the competition last year (with the same team) and won, so we thought it would be fun to give it another go this year to see if we could retain our title. I personally always enjoy a good challenge and solving problems,” said Rudner, who is currently studying honours in mathematics. “I think it was quite tough trying to get a balance between the best solution we could think of, and the best solution we could code up in time. In the end, we were successful, but there were still a lot more ideas we could have coded up if we had more time or had planned our time better. I think it was a good lesson in prioritising and strategizing.”
McGregor, also studying mathematics at honours level, found this year’s problem harder that in 2019. “The fact that we weren't all competing from the same location was a challenge. The most rewarding part of the competition was when they unveiled the winners and we saw it was us. We knew we had improved greatly in the last hour, but we weren't sure how much the other teams would improve so we were all very nervous."
