Over at the UTSA campus on the north-side of San Antonio, we competed at Regional UIL Computer Science.

The University Interscholastic League or UIL is an organization which creates rules for and sometimes administers almost all athletic, music, and academic contests for public elementary and secondary schools in the American state of Texas.

The computer science test is a 45 minute multiple choice exam consisting of various questions involving the Java language. Questions usually range around tracing through programming code and finding the result of executing that code. Questions also cover data structures like lists, trees, maps, heaps, and tables. After the written exam, three of the four contestants compete in a 2 hour session of actual programming. Teams are allowed one computer and work on a packet of 12 problems.

Some of the interesting questions from this year involved changing normal text into “AIM” text, calculating what you should do with your pets if they eat chocolate, and playing a game of Space Race.

Our team came in second place over all. We will be alternates for our region and might go to state if we placed the highest among all second place teams in Texas.

Either way, Evan, James and I will be heading up to Tyler, Texas for state TCEA programming in a few weeks.