Favorite Programming Contests? 37
SandSpider asks: "Sometimes, the daily grind of programming can wear a person down. Sometimes, people need challenges to expand their abilities and outlook. My personal favorite is the ADHOC/MacHack Showcase, where you spend up to 48 hours straight programming something impressive, perhaps with the conference theme, perhaps no. Sure, there's no prize, but it's the recognition from other programmers that makes it worthwhile. What is everyone else's favorite programming competition, and what did you do for it?"
ioccc (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ioccc (Score:1)
daily WTF (Score:2)
By far The daily WTF [thedialywtf.com] (Despite the name it is work safe). I check that every morning, and if I still haven't won I know I'm safe to program today, otherwise I change careers to something that doesn't involve computers.
Re:daily WTF (Score:2)
Re:daily WTF (Score:1)
thank you very much for that site. I have just read the last 4-5 pages of wtf's and have to say this is an all-time favorite. I was just laughing so hard I began to cry.
I like my boss' daily contest (Score:2, Funny)
www.thedailywtf.com (Score:2)
Ok, so it's not something you are looking forward to winning, or ever knowing you 'won' for that matter.
We have all made our WTFs but the entries here are real winners :)
robocraft looks fun... (Score:1, Interesting)
http://robocraft.mit.edu/ [mit.edu]
or
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-a nd-Computer-Science/6-370January--IAP--2005/Course Home/index.htm [mit.edu]
The ICFP of course. (Score:5, Insightful)
No language restrictions, very interesting problems. quite prestigious to win. it is great!
The only downside is that it is only once a year. It is fun to do it in a language you don't know as a forced crash course too if you don't expect to win.
It starts this weekend! so start preparing.
Re:The ICFP of course. (Score:2)
My solution's a bit different (Score:2)
Works pretty well for me. Coding for 48 hours straight for no money doesn't really sound too relaxing or enticing to me.
Perl Golf (Score:3, Interesting)
obligatory (Score:2)
and then i said that the deadline for the oxford coding competition was valentines day, they were like, "do you geeks have weird alternative holidays for every thing?"
Corewars! (Score:4, Insightful)
Underhanded C (Score:3, Insightful)
Circuit Cellar (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Circuit Cellar (Score:2)
Re:Circuit Cellar (Score:1)
I got a free kit from Renesas for the contest that is about to end. For the upcoming Philips-sponsored design contest for an Arm core(?) mcu, there are no kits, so you have to make your own board.
Re:Circuit Cellar (Score:2)
Re:Circuit Cellar (Score:2)
Re:Circuit Cellar (Score:2)
Sometimes hardware is best.. (Score:2)
It is programming on a small scale, but it also involves building some hardware. If you are burnt out on programming, working with your hands on real hardware is a great way to relax. It is also fun to work on the nitty gritty low level stuff if you are used to high-level languages. (or vice versa). When it comes to languages it is Haskell or Assembly for me, anything in between would just be mediocre
There are a lot of PIC, Amtel, or oth
ACSL (Score:1)
ADHOC/MacHack (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll second the OP's favorite. I've only attended for two years, but it's a great conference. I'm for sure going again this year.
I came in second place two years ago in the showcase by teaming up with someone else to write a networked Pong game that literally played across the screens. The paddles were on the end computers, and the ball would bounce across all the computers between it. It hovered over the desktop, which we demonstrated by showing a QuickTime movie playing in the background on one of the c
more details about the ADHOC showcase... (Score:1, Interesting)
My favorite MacHack was the one done by Dean Yu that blasted a random inflammatory sound ("ouch!") for each error spewed while compiling under MPW. Come to think of it, Dean did a whole bunch of my favorite hacks.
I've gotta think of a good hack to do this year.
(keeps thinking the same thing year after year)
Crash and Compile (Score:1)
We called the event "Crash and Compile". It was run as a pretty standard ACM style programming contest, all coding done through terminals on the VAX (running 4.2 BSD IIRC), but with the handicap that an alcoholic beverage had to be consumed before every compile. Who "won" is a matter of debate, but it was fun watching
Re:Crash and Compile (Score:1)
Short, Fast Competitions (Score:2)
Top Coder [topcoder.com] is a very large event, with thousands of participants. They have weekly-ish small competitions, and multiple times per year they have cash prizes ranging from $1000 to $100000.
Sphere Online Judge [sphere.pl] is another great competition, although far smaller and with no real time limit. No prizes, but much more varied and fun problems, with a HUGE selection of programming languages and completely automated judging.
Valladolid (Score:1)
http://acm.uva.es/problemset/ [acm.uva.es]
ACM Programming Competition (Score:1)
http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/ [baylor.edu]
game coding competitions (Score:1)
The yearly MiniGame Compo [ffd2.com] is great too. I've written 1kB and 4kB games in previous years, they didn't rank too well but they were a lot of fun to write.
Baby Manchester Mark I in 1998 (Score:1)
They wrote a simulator, several actually (here's one [demon.co.uk] that's still online)
, for a 32-word x 32-bit-per-word computer. Each word had 5 address bits and 3 instruction bits, the rest was user-defined. Optionally, you could treat a word as 32 bits of user-defined data. The best program won a prize, everone else got a written certificate of thanks.
The winning entry? A noodle-timer. Congrats aga