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15th IOCCC Results Posted
leob writes: "FWIW, the 15th International Obfuscated C Code Contest finally came to a conclusion. Read the main page, or, get one big tarball." The contest took a little longer than expected, but the results are fine example of their craft.
What use is this? Surely winning this competition is a sign you should never work again? Obfuscated code (aka elegant) is no faster, even if it is shorter, and may even compile into worse code.
Well, (IMO) you're completely wrong. IOCC code isn't just "bad code getting awards". the winners of the IOCC show an understanding of the subtleties of the way the C language work far beyond that of your average C programmer, or even your pretty good C programmer. Or, to quote Peter Van Der Linden, "..[The IOCC] is a lot of fun and can extend your knowledge in surprising ways".
Spend a few hours or looking through the archives at things like "best one liners" and try and figure out what they do without reading the description - or maybe look through gems like the 1500 character BASIC interpreter. Deobfuscate some entries to figure out how they work and you might find you learn something about what the language can do and it might improve your day to day programming.
For me this shows the problm with open source - people are more interested in playing silly games than actually getting something constructive done.
Yuk, Trollish.
I really enjoy the IOCCC, and every year I download the results and play with them. Some are startlingly clever, like the flight simulator a couple of years ago. Writing these obfuscated programs is a special skill, and, yes, it is a form of craftsmanship within the context of the competition. And, of course, the people who can write these little gems have to be brilliant programmers first.
But in all normal circumstances, obfuscated code in any language is bad code . The whole purpose of highlevel languages is to communicate with human beings, not to communicate with the machine: to communicate with the programmer who is to come after you, who has to debug your code, or port it, or update it because some library it uses is obsolete and some of the API has been deprecated or dropped. That programmer may of course be you.
Code that can't be picked up by someone else in six months time - someone possibly less skilled than yourself, and read, and understood, and modified, is poorly crafted. Bad workmanship. If you can't understand this, you aren't going to be a successful member of any development team, either commercial or open source.
Enjoy the IOCCC as a cort of cross between puzzle games, satire, and poetry. A very special kind of programming - a very skilled kind of programming - but one which has virtually no carry-over into the real world.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Oops. Forgot to answer the question. The thing uses the Spigot Algorithm, by Stanley Rabinowitz and Stan Wagon.
See (for instance) <http://www.physik.tu-muenchen.de/lehrstuehle/T 32/matpack/html/Mathematics/Pi.html> to get a description. Remove slashdot added spaces from the URL.
So, definitively, no. You won't be a contender with an extremly common stolen program.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Hey, try actually having a boss who won the IOCCC...three times, even...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
..people were asking for elegant code yesterday!
For me this shows the problm with open source - people are more interested in playing silly games than actually getting something constructive done.
I can just see Kryten now... "Fun? Ah, yes. The employment of time in a profitless and non-practicable way." So what if it's pointless. It's nice to do seomthing for fun every now and then. We aren't supposed to be writing top-notch code 24/7.
A few entries that I saw were mostly c programs converted to ascii art, which I believe is a pity as if reindented correctly this would not look as obfuscated as in previous contests. ;-).
I however enjoyed some entries, like PrimeNum which is an example of clean obfuscated code, despite its heavy use of preprocessing directives (BTW, even its own name is obfuscating as it has not much to do with prime numbers, even though its apparent algorithm is
Tomx is also interesting as it is a Makefile and a source file at the same time.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I couldn't disagree more. I won in 1991 (and later - eg 2000 ;-)), just about the time that I was applying for a job. I put 'winning the IOCCC' in my CV, which may sound like suicide to some.
However consider this. Would you like to work for a boss who feels that winning the IOCCC is something to be ashamed from? Or would you rather work for a boss who feels it's a decent bit of fun?
I later found out that after dwindling the job candidates down there were just two suitable people left - I was one of them. My boss told me that winning the IOCCC was one of the factors that helped him to pick me over the other candidate.
So in conclusion - it can actuall _help_ your job prospects!
(Yes I know it's a troll, but who cares.)