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NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology students win regional programming contest. What's faster at computer programming than a three-headed monkey? The NTNU's winning computer programming student team /dev/duff/, which took first place at the 2004 Northwestern Europe Programming Contest by beating Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology team 'Three Headed Monkey'. The contest was held 14 November 2004 at the Lund Institute of Technology in Lund, Sweden.
The winners, Børge Mikkelsen, Øyvind Grotmol and Erling Ellingsen, along with coach Nils Grimsmo, will travel to Shanghai, China for the 2005 finals in April 2005. The Association for Computer Machinery's (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest is the oldest, largest, computer programming contest in the world. This year's annual contest, the 29th, has drawn more than 3,000 student teams from 1,400 universities worldwide. Students compete in regional contests like the one in Sweden to narrow the field; the 75 best teams – including NTNU's victors – will compete in the 2005 finals. The victory is a good example of the strength that can come from interdisciplinary cooperation, because the team members come from three different departments at NTNU. Mikkelsen is a student from the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Grotmol is from the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, and Ellingsen is from the Department of Computer and Information Science.