Rutgers College junior Adam Gashlin would always play with Legos and his erector set as a child. Yet, there was only so much he could physically construct.
Computers, on the other hand, presented unlimited possibilities.
After years of computer programming, Gashlin, graduate student Joseph Crobak and School of Engineering senior Marla Slusky are flying to Tokyo to compete in the World Finals of ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.
The annual competition is the world's oldest and largest programming contest, with its roots extending back to 1970 at Texas A&M University.
Since that time, it has grown to encompass more than 6,000 teams from 1,756 universities around the world, according to a prepared statement.
The group is one of 88 teams competing worldwide - including 20 from the United States - in this year's event.
They qualified by winning first place in last fall's New York regional competition - besting teams from Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, Princeton University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, State University of New York at Stony Brook and Yale University.
"It's nice to be the best in our region," Gashlin said. "And having such big-name schools to compare to makes it all the more sweet."
Gashlin, who has been on the team since his first year, said the competition involves using and applying the correct and efficient algorithms.
He said teams are given a set of problem descriptions that explain a situation, and the format of input and output to the problem.
An example involves making change - where the input is the number of cents and the output is the number of quarters, dimes, etc. - using the smallest total number of coins.
Gashlin said the challenge of this easy problem is solving it quickly.
After the program is complete, it is sent to judges who decide if it passes or fails.
"A program might fail because it is wrong or because it takes too long to run," Gashlin said.
He said the goal is to solve as many of the eight to 11 problems correctly in the time given.
The team splits up the problems according to who thinks they know how to do what.
Since there is only one computer available for each team, Gashlin said they try to have as much written out by hand to minimize the time needed on the computer.
In preparation for the competition, the team holds five-hour practices weekly.
"We practice by using problem sets from former contests to exercise our ability to solve them," Gashlin said.
He said he hopes the team's participation in the world finals will make people more aware of the programming team.
"We've prepared a lot," Gashlin said. "But we will be up against a lot of ridiculously good teams from schools that take this contest very seriously. So it'll be very challenging."