A Carnegie Mellon University programming team called XP-Developer earned a trip to the Association for Computing Machinery-International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals with a second place finish at the East Central North America ACM-ICPC competition.

That team, along with the CMU2 and CMU4 teams, captured three of the five top spots in the competition, which took place Nov. 8 at Youngstown State University and three other sites. A fourth team, CMU6, won the Solid Programmer's award for solving the most problems with the fewest penalties — three problems solved in just four tries.

"The contest was particularly challenging this year," said Danny Sleator, professor of computer science and head coach of CMU's programming teams. "Seventy percent of the teams didn't solve any problems at all."

A record 140 teams from 61 colleges and universities throughout western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, eastern Ontario, and most of Indiana competed at the regional contest. A team from the University of Waterloo — like CMU, a consistently high-scoring team in the annual competition — came in first.

The three members of XP-Developer, also known as CMU1, are Jason Li, a senior computer science major, and Josh Brakensiek and Bill Cooperman, both freshmen in the Mellon College of Science. They will travel to Morocco for the ACM-ICPC 2015 World Finals.

CMU2, which finished in fourth place, includes three computer science majors: freshman Raymond Kang, senior Ajay Ravindran and junior George Hotz. CMU4, which includes David Wise and Yuting Ge, both seniors majoring in mathematical sciences and computer science, and Jiacheng Ye, a sophomore CS major, finished in fifth place. CMU6, which finished in 11^th place in addition to receiving the Solid Programmers honor, includes Matthew Lee, a freshman engineering major, Matt Dee, a junior majoring in CS and robotics, and An Wu, a senior CS major.

Other CMU teams in the competition were CMU3, an all-woman team that includes seniors Kechun (Coco) Mao and Jenny Liao and junior Naomi Rubin; and CMU5, which includes Peijin Zhang and Li Chen Koh, a sophomore and junior, respectively, majoring in mathematical sciences/computer science, and Wenxuan Li, a sophomore CS major.

Also, competing unofficially, was a team of master's students: Zhanpeng Fang (CS), Daniel Lu, (Robotics), and Archit Karandikar (CS). 

Sleator was assisted in coaching duties this year by Yan Gu, a Ph.D. student in computer science. Jump Trading is the team sponsor.