Will Code for Drinks

Social event at ScrollBar, IT University of Copenhagen

Project maintained by thorehusfeldt Hosted on GitHub Pages — Theme by mattgraham

Will Code For Drinks is a social event originating at ScrollBar at IT University of Copenhagen. Teams of friends collaborate to solve entertaining programming problems in return for free beverages at the bar.

With more than 350 teams participating, Will Code For Drinks is the largest programming event in Scandinavia.

The problems are constructed to be attractive for newcomers, the atmosphere is extremely relaxed, and participants are encouraged to help each other with problem solving, debugging, or basic programming language or computer issues. Assistants are available and eager to help at all times during the event. The focus is on problem solving, social interaction within and among teams, programming, confidence-building, and fun.

Who is this for?

The event should be entertaining and meaningful for programmers at every skill level: Even if you have zero confidence in your own programming ability, we promise that you’ll get at least one problem done. On the other hand, the harder problems should be enough to keep experienced programmers busy. Don’t expect to solve all problems; aim at two or three.

The target participants are first-year students with a few months of introductory programming under their belt, and who have never participated in something like this. Some of the problems are easy enough even for Computer Science professors!

Next event

Will Code For Drinks 2025 is planned for November 2025, 16:15–19:00 Danish time (CET), probably on a Friday.

Call for problems 2025. If you want to join problem development, email thore@itu.dk, preferably with a suggestion or two for a problem. Problem development happens in a shared Github repository and uses BAPCtools, communication is via Slack. We expect to spend considerable time during September and October 2025.
Call for hosts. If you want to host a WCFD event in 2025, also email thore@itu.dk. Hosting involves very little; but you must provide a setup for a physical event that is consistent in atmosphere with WCFD. In particular, it shouldn’t feel like a competition, and the host should hand out free beverages for solved problems.

(No) Preparation

No formal preparation is required, you can show up at the last minute. However:

It’s more fun if you find some friends to team up with.
One of you should bring a computer for programming, and you’ll need pen and paper for problem solving and collaborative thinking. Bring a charger or make sure your batteries are full.
If you’ve never done something like this before and want to get a feeling for the type of problems appearing at the event, you can try to solve some easy problems on Open Kattis, such as Hello World!, Baby Bites, or maybe even the WCFD 2019 problem Drinking Song. This is particularly useful for learning how to read and write input and output. But don’t stress out over this beforehand – we’ll help during the event. You can find more of the older problems publicly at Open Kattis

Details

Here’s how to have the most fun:

Bring your own (fully charged) laptop, which must be able to connect to the wireless network, for instance via eduroam. We won’t have facilities for plugging in extenders, so charging options will be very limited.
One laptop per team.
Up to three people per team, three is best.
The event lasts for three hours and contains half a dozen problems.
One free beverage per solved problem per person, up to a maximum of three beverages per person.
Some twenty different programming languages are accepted, including Java, Python, JavaScript, and various C dialects. See the Kattis language overview for the full list.
No prior registration is required. When the server is up, you can create your team at wcfd25.kattis.com on the day of the event (or as soon as the server becomes online, which may be a few days before the event), including after the event has started. Help with this is available from 15:45. Anonymous participation is fine; creative team names are appreciated.
After your team solves a problem (and having it accepted on the server), you will get a drinks tickets for the bar.

Previous events

Friday, 15 Nov 2024, 16:15-19:00. Hosts: ScrollBar, IT University of Copenhagen, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Fredagscaféen at Institut for Datalogi, Aarhus Universitet. Studentercaféen Hegnet, DTU, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs.Lyngby. Bragginn in Nauthólsvík, Reykjavík, Iceland. NHH Code in Aud Q, NHH Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway. [Problems on Open Kattis] [wcfd24.kattis.com].
Friday, 10 November 2023, 16–19. Hosts: ScrollBar at IT University of Copenhagen; Fredagscaféen at Institut for Datalogi, Aarhus Universitet; and Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Sponsors: Mikkeller and Basic Algorithms Research Copenhagen (BARC). [Problems on Open Kattis] [wcfd23.kattis.com].
Friday, 11 November 2022, 16-19. Will Code for Drinks 2022 took place in the ScrollBar of IT University of Copenhagen and at Fredagscaféen ved Institut for Datalogi, Aarhus Universitet. The problems were at [wcfd22.kattis.com]. Problem authors: Christian Lebeda, Jakob Israelsen, Johan Sannemo, Oskar Haarklou Vejleborg, Thore Husfeldt (chair), Troels Bjerre Lund. Testers: Erik Amirell Eklöf, Maj Stenmark, Måns Magnusson, Kattis. The ScrollBar event at ITU Copenhagen included a BEST TEAM COSTUME OF THE NIGHT award. [Problems on Open Kattis] [wcfd22.kattis.com].
Friday, 12 November 2021, 16-19. Will Code for Drinks 2021 took place in the ScrollBar of IT University of Copenhagen and at Fredagscaféen ved Institut for Datalogi, Aarhus Universitet. [Problems on Open Kattis] [wcfd22.kattis.com]. The problem setters for WCFD 2021 were Troels Bjerre Lund, Thore Husfeldt (chair), Christian Janos Lebeda, Oskar Haarklou Veileborg, and Johan Sannemo. WCFD 2021 enjoyed social, financial, and/or moral support of the computer science departments at IT University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University, ScrollBar and Datalogisk Fredagscafé, the BARC Centre for Basic Algorithms Research Copenhagen, Alessandro Bruni, and Kattis.
29 November 2019. [Problems on Open Kattis], [Event on ITU’s Kattis], [repo with solutions and problem data]
12 April 2019. [Event on Open Kattis]
23 November 2018. [Event on Open Kattis]