Skilled mastery of machine language

Furkan Gedikoglu wins first-semester computer science competition

Once again, numerous students of the Bachelor degree programmes "Media Computing" and "E-Government" of the Faculty of Communication and Environment took part in the annual internal computer science competition for freshmen. E-Government student Furkan Gedikoglu was able to prevail against all fellow students and won first place.

This year's competition task in the module "Fundamentals of Computer Science" led by Professor Dr.-Ing. Ulrich Greveler was to programme the computer to determine prime numbers using so-called machine commands. A machine instruction is an instruction to the processor to carry out a simple operation, for example an addition or a comparison. The resulting programme is called a machine language and can be executed at breakneck speed: Today's computers execute billions of machine instructions per second. However, it is difficult to construct complex processes from very simple instructions.

The challenge for the more than one hundred first-year students was to create an effective and error-free programme in machine language under time pressure.

After only 44 minutes, Furkan Gedikoglu had mastered this task with flying colours and secured 1st place. Initiator Professor Dr Ulrich Greveler is proud of this achievement: „Our competition is a special challenge: the result has to be achieved very quickly, but it has to be correct."

The certificate presentation took place by video conference. "We'll make up for it after the Corona period," says Greveler.

In its computer science programmes Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences provides a well-founded basic education linked with application relevance and current technologies.

Since winter semester 2020-20201, the degree programme E-Government is offered in an additional, dual-vocational mode of study in collaboration with the State Government of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Greveler is very much in favour of dual programmes since they are rapidly gaining in importance. "The study success rate with dual studying is particularly high. An inclination towards mathematics, an interest in logic and a creative approach to the digital world are ideal prerequisites for studying”, he emphasizes.