Brad, have you tried mailing to mista potta himself about it?

Best Wishes

I learned CS pretty quickly... But then again, I really got into it. It really depends on how interested you are by computer science. Most guys start doing it because they like the mathematical base of the contest, but then get disgusted by all the annoying syntaxes you have to remember for the contest.

If you like CS, and practice once a day... You'll be really competitive within one month. If you don't like it, and you just kind of practice every once in a while... you'll be moderate within 2 months. (Or at least, this is what happened to the guys on my team. I had one guy get really good and go to state, and the other one got 8th at region with a relatively low score).

As for practicing... Buy a book like The Fundementals of Java 5.0 by Ivor Horton or Big Java by Cay H, and begin reading (a book, because e-books are hard to stay focused on). When I say reading... I mean read it all! Don't skip the stuff you think you know. In the worst case scenario, you'll just relearn stuff... And that isn't so bad. Its much better than skipping stuff you don't know.

To supplement the reading... You'll need to begin coding to understand some of the more advanced topics that Trussel sprinkles into his tests. To get some basis in algorithm development, I'd go to the ACM archives at: http://acm.uva.es/problemset/ and begin working problems. Trust me... This will help you immensely in Hands on stuff (I think they're gonna add this to our district meets this year).

And finally, if you want to invest any money into CS. Buy yourself some tests from www.cistests.com . If you don't want to spend 50 bucks, then have your school buy for you. You can compare your scores with the ones posted for the invite meets on texasmath if you want to. Thats always fun.

The rest is up to you. Good luck in your CS pursuits!

- Zack -