Domain: itknowledge.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to itknowledge.com.
Comments · 21
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not many
I sat here trying to think of some examples for a while, but I can't. I went and looked at some of the code I have on my systems... it isn't.
I sometimes think this is one of the failings of a lot of open source projects... without a good solid core group of people leading the charge you tend to end up with hack atop hack atop hack and various different coding styles and no coherent design. An example of that kind of code is SourceForge.
Now I can think of at least three examples of the opposite... unfortunately they're all proprietary code bases so I can't share them.
In many of the larger projects though you can ocasionally find bits and pieces of pure poetry in code. There's an example in the Linux kernel, I forget exactly where - maybe in the vmm, where someone took the time to fully digest a rather hairy function and they totally rewrote it without changing the inputs, output, or side-effects in a small clean block of code. These are the folks that turely deserve this shirt.
We need a new website, one that can showcase really good code... make it known as the art form it is. codepoet.com and codepoet.org are both already taken by indivuals... perhaps codepoetry.net? make it required reading by cs students, just like trips to art museums are required of art students, and theatre and literature majors are required to study the great works of their fields. Maybe they can sell T-shirts and posters with elegant code on them, and books full of gracefull algorythms.
For irony the site can also link to the obfuscated perl contest. -
Save some money
Read Teach Yourself CGI Programming with PERL 5 in a Week online.
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The entries
are all here.
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Re:Getting any of them to compile....
You can download all the entries from The Perl Journal Contest Page. It's not as convenient as copy&paste, but it works.
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Are we educating people in Free Software?The issue is not about Microsoft vs Linux, I think that even my 9 years old girld told me that the machine that they used at school were different that the linux boxes at my home/office.
The issue is:
Are we telling people about software as speech (de-CSS in English, requires login), or about Open Source as FREE Software.
Recently I handled some people, people who barely knew about computers and internet, social sciences people, "The Cathedral and The Bazaar". The results were amazing. They caught the story completely and now we are discussing the issues with a new light.
My moral would be: tell teachers and parents about the new social values of Cooperative Development and sharing versus cheating, and the battle will be won, no matter if they use Windows. Tell teacher to start cooperative projects, OSS like, using the Internet as a collaborative tool. They will find it a great idea once they catch the concepts (and it's difficult for them to understand the issues). The boys will learn to use the mail to speak, no matter if they use Exchange or even Outlook for that.
That should be our target. When they know about Free Software and how it develops and evolves, they will compare it with propietary solutions, and they will have a clear mind to understand the differences.
Sorry for the evangelic tone, but I feeled truly evangelic
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PerlWho would want to write Obfuscated C when they can write Obfuscated Perl?
Or Even better.... Perl Poetry.
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PerlWho would want to write Obfuscated C when they can write Obfuscated Perl?
Or Even better.... Perl Poetry.
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Re:Japanese Perl?
Well, to an English speaker, it would probably look like line noise.
With some programs, it'd probably look exactly the same.
Rather like it does right now. :) -
Previous contentsFor those interested in coverage of previous contents and their winners:
1st annual content
2nd annual contest
3rd annual contest
4th annual contestGood luck to this year's contestants!
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Kiro -
Powerful strategy (was Re:I won the last ...)There's another very powerful strategy that I have seen employed.
There was a similar competition sometime back - the Prisoner's Dilemma Contest run by the Perl Journal. Your program played against two other programs in a series of matches, and the organizers would plant dumb robots.
The winning strategy there was actually a team of three entries: two of which (slaves) were bent on losing to the third (master). I read through the rock-paper-scissors contest rules, and I can see that such cooperation is not precluded. Try coding a master and a bunch of slaves, so that when they meet (and can recognize such a meeting), master will always beat slave. Of course, play sensibly when the master and slave are not playing against each other.
Come to think of it, Iocaine Powder + master-slave would be really powerful indeed.
Sreeram.
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Observation is the essence of art. -
Powerful strategy (was Re:I won the last ...)There's another very powerful strategy that I have seen employed.
There was a similar competition sometime back - the Prisoner's Dilemma Contest run by the Perl Journal. Your program played against two other programs in a series of matches, and the organizers would plant dumb robots.
The winning strategy there was actually a team of three entries: two of which (slaves) were bent on losing to the third (master). I read through the rock-paper-scissors contest rules, and I can see that such cooperation is not precluded. Try coding a master and a bunch of slaves, so that when they meet (and can recognize such a meeting), master will always beat slave. Of course, play sensibly when the master and slave are not playing against each other.
Come to think of it, Iocaine Powder + master-slave would be really powerful indeed.
Sreeram.
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Observation is the essence of art. -
Perl does haiku...
There is a Perl module written by Damian Conway called Coy which performs error handling in haiku. It has an extensible grammer...
- The presentation on Coy from The Perl Conferenct (TPC) 1999
- It covered extensively in the Winter 99 Perl Journal.
- You can pick up a copy from your local CPAN.
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Perl Haiku ContestThere has been a Perl Haiku contest in The Perl Journal. The Contest page is here (it seems to be unreachable for me now, so here is the Google's cached version of this page.)
-Yenya
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Just Like Perl!Wow! Look at this: it's a new programming language! Gosh, it looks like Perl, smells like perl, feels like perl...
Only without the years of development, the thousands of freely available modules, the extreme flexibility, the massive cross-platform portability (you can configure perl for your toaster), integration with Apache, Database support, tens of thousands of existing experts and freely available sample scripts, a huge set of some of the world's best programming language documentation, and (let's not forget) its own poetry (what other language can claim that?), having the core built by one of the coolest people on earth (read and laugh!).
Maybe Pike is amusing, but next to a language like Perl, is it really needed? And can you really claim that Pike has "character" when you can't even write poetry? (Yes, I am a Perl bigot.)
BTW, Hello world in perl? perl -e 'print "hello, world\n";' on the command line will do the trick. Ha!
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Obfuscated Law Contest?
Seriously, some of the patents and other such legal nonsense I've seen over the last few months make the Obfuscated Code contest look like preschool stuff. (not meant to degrade any of the amazing things those contestants do)
-- GBF: General Brain Fart - press any key to wake up -
Crypto And Crypto LawHmm. for a good foundation in Crypto, I would recommend a look at PGP and Scramdisk (not only for the programs but for the information on the sites. In addition, the excellent Applied Cryptography is available online, as is the author's regular crypto newsletter CryptoGram.
I don't have much on the USA legal stuff (but that can be found on the above sites) but for the UK, currently fighting against one of the worst "Big Brother" Violation of the right to secrecy in communications bills known in the world, the UKCrypto discussion list archive would be worth a look...Finally, here are further links to, for example, the crypto law survey which will give you an idea of the legality of Crypto in various countries.
Good luck, and we will look forward to seeing your report if you choose to post it to the web.
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Go Harl Go!Wow, one of Harl's poems got used as the example. I'm impressed -- he's a really cool guy, and smart as hell. Pasting from an email this morning (sorry Harl):
> hey, our very own Harl is famous:
>
> http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/perl -poetry00.htmlWow.
I doubt I'll be performing in Silicon Valey somehow. The program does sync the disk on a unix system though. I guess system calls are cheating a *bit*. However, I've replaced the sync command on one of my unix machines with this poem as a wrapper, so it runs the poem whenever a sync request is made.
Harl
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Single entries to multiple contests?It would be interesting to see a single valid entry that could be submitted to more than one Obfuscated Foo Code Contest. Here are some of the contest announcements (not all current):
- Obfuscated FoxPro
- Obfuscated Java Programming Contest
- The 1st Annual Obfuscated Perl Contest
- Obfuscated PostScript Contest
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Gimp progress
For those who haven't checked out 1.1.x Gimp, you really should It's a horse of a different bitmap. There's so much that's new. The Gimp/Perl plugins (my favorite, as a few are mine) have really come of age. The user-interface is still a little quirky, but gods is it nicer than 1.0.
The fast unsharp mask is amazing. Try sucking in a photo of some forest scene or people. Use Image -> Equalize and then use Filters -> Enhance -> Unsharp Mask. You will see detail you couldn't see when you were taking the picture!
1.2 is going to really rock. Suck it out of CVS if you want to see the latest, and/or work on the code. There's a great CVS tutorial for accessing the Gimp here:
CVS Tutorial.
Also you can find Gimp News here.
Also, as a shameless plug, you could find out how to write plugins in Perl from my recent Perl Journal article. You can find out more about the Perl Journal at http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/ It's kind of a funny article, since in it I plug my company, and I no longer work there ;-) -
Re:That obfuscated Perl code contest...
There is a link on the main page of The Perl Journal.
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Results from last year's Obfuscated Perl Contest
You can find a write-up of last year's contest in issue 10 of the Perl Journal.