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EPROG Masters 2026

A live coding competition was held for the first time as part of the lecture “Introduction to Programming for Technical Mathematics.”

Winners of the EPROG programming challenge 2026

© Michael Feischl

On Friday, January 30, 2026, the lecture "Introduction to Programming for Technical Mathematics" was abruptly transformed into a digital arena. For the first time ever, the stage was set for a live coding battle: the EPROG Masters 2026.

The mission? A three-hour code sprint to build a bot capable of mastering the cult classic "2048." The constraints were gloriously analog: while the EPROG lecture notes were permitted as the "Holy Grail" of wisdom, the internet—and thus the lifeline of Stack Overflow or ChatGPT—was strictly forbidden. This was pure, unadulterated hand-coding.

The Leaderboard:

  • 1st Place:Matthias Oberreiter and Emanuel Perneker dominated the competition with a sophisticated Min-Max-inspired algorithm.
  • 2nd Place:Veronika Hryhorieva and Oleksii Tielnov took the prize for perhaps the most creative approach, utilizing the famous Collatz sequence for their bot.
  • 3rd Place: Bronze went to Mark Michael Drecker and Nicolas Recht.

The Institute for Analysis and Scientific Computing and the sponsor Twentyone Solutions GmbH (CEO David Saal) tip their virtual hats to such algorithmic elegance under pressure. Sincere congratulations to all!