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16th IOCCC Winners Released

Posted by michael on from the my-brane-hurts dept.

An anonymous submitter wrote: "A while ago the 16th IOCCC winners were announced. Apparently "releas[ing] the winning source by mid April 2002" actually means "within a year", but you can finally enjoy them here. Or, if you don't enjoy them, you can beat your head against the wall trying to figure out how these programs work ;-)"

15 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. woah by klocwerk · · Score: 3, Funny

    well that was an incredibly fast slashdotting.
    and I was looking forward to having no freakin clue as to what any of the programs did.

    --

    "You worthless post!"
    -Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
  2. My entry: by Thud457 · · Score: 5, Funny

    main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="First post!\n)";
    (!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[! !c]+!!c,!c));
    **c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);}

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  3. I know who wrote them! by Domingos+Neto · · Score: 5, Funny
    They work here at my company, I'm sure! I always see this kind of obfuscation when I have to debug code writen by other programmers that work with me!

    No, I'm being unfair. IOCCC code is much easier to understand :o)

  4. Mirrors by Nidhogg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google cache of mirrors

    Enjoy them while they last.

  5. Better still .. by artg · · Score: 5, Informative

    .. look at one of the mirrors

  6. some karma whoring.. mirrors: by magwm · · Score: 5, Informative
    • Australia and other Pacific
    • www.au.ioccc.org
      - Sydney, Australia (34 0' S 151 0' E)
    • Extraterrestrial

      SETI is looking for some sites :-)
    • South America
      none

    We are looking for more mirrors.
    Do you want to mirror the IOCCC web site?

  7. Re:Lost here ... by pmcneill · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, the contest is to demonstrate a mastery of ANSI C. Only someone who truly understands every intricacy of the preprocessor and the compiler can write one of these. A much better comparison might be something like an NBA slam dunk contest -- you'll see stuff that you won't see anywhere else and is completely stunning. Very, very few programmers could hope to create an entry such as these.

  8. Re:VB Developers by Patrick+May · · Score: 4, Funny
    To the average VB Developer, the words "Obfuscated C" is redundant.

    The average VB Developer doesn't understand words with as many syllables as "redundant."

  9. Imagine my embarrassment... by msouth · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...I didn't even know the International Olympic Committee had a c compiler.

    (yeah, yeah, ObReinterpretedAcronymComment, I know)

    --
    Liberty uber alles.
  10. My favorite... by Arjuna+Theban · · Score: 4, Funny


    My all-time favorite IOCCC winner has been savastio.

    It's been up on my cube wall for a while. If anyone complains about my code here at work I threaten them to code like it.

    Always works!

  11. ascii art competition? by m0nkyman · · Score: 4, Funny

    The IOCCC is an ASCII modern art competition right?

    --
    ~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
  12. Formatting? by Quixote · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is it me, or is relying on formatting to obfuscate your code a bit cheesy? IMHO, a true work of art would be nicely formatted and all that, and still be incomprehensible beyond belief.

  13. How To Write Unmaintainable Code by CrystalFalcon · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is a whole essay on the topic. Funny as hell a read, and good in-your-face material for co-workers, too.

    How To Write Unmaintainable Code

  14. My public apology for the late release of the winn by chongo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Speaking for myself, as only one of the IOCCC judges:

    I want to make a Public apology for the extremely late posting of the 2001 winners. The delay was discourteous to the people who put a great deal of effort into their submissions.

    Rather than go into the reasons for the delay here: Let me say that when the 17th IOCCC occurs, things will be done differently.

    Thank you all those who encouraged us to complete the 16th IOCCC. And a very big S O R R Y for the lateness of the release.

    --
    chongo (was here) /\oo/\
  15. How the IOCCC was started by chongo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    One day (23 March 1984 to be exact), back Larry Bassel and I (Landon Curt Noll) were working for National Semiconductor's Genix porting group, we were both in our offices trying to fix some very broken code. Larry had been trying to fix a bug in the classic Bourne shell (C code #defined to death to sort of look like Algol) and I had been working on the finger program from early BSD (a bug ridden finger implementation to be sure). We happened to both wander (at the same time) out to the hallway in Building 7C to clear our heads.

    We began to compare notes: "You won't believe the code I am trying to fix". And: "Well you cannot imagine the brain damage level of the code I'm trying to fix". As well as: "It more than bad code, the author really had to try to make it this bad!"

    After a few minutes we wandered back into my office where I posted a flame to net.lang.c inviting people to try and out obfuscate the UN*X source code we had just been working on.

    (I had to post this typo correction :-). Thus began the tradition of putting typos in the contest rules and guidelines ... to make them more obfuscated of course! :-)

    BTW: This posting was made back in the days when AT&T was the evil giant. Now, Microsoft makes AT&T look mild and kind in comparison. :-( (IMHO) ).

    BTW: See the story about the ''Bill Gates'' award. :-)

    OK, back to the story. We received a number of entries by EMail. When we began to receive messages from outside of the US, Larry and I decided to include International in the name. The 1st IOCCC winners were posted on 17 April 1984.

    There were 4 winners in 1984.
    1. <dis>honorable mention
    2. 3rd place
    3. 2nd place
    4. 1st place

    The <dis>honorable mention wished to remain anonymous. While many have asked who it was, we have continued to follow the author's wish to remain anonymous. A few years ago, we asked the author if they still wanted to remain anonymous. They said: "Yes, I want to keep my anonymity. But you can tell them that I am a well known for my connection to the C language". The only other anonymous winner occurred this year.

    The 1984 winner remains one of my all time favorites.

    The name used in the posting of the 1st IOCCC winner posting was International Obfuscated C Code Contest or IOCCC for short.

    The posting said 1st annual, so in 1985 we held the 2nd IOCCC contest and the tradition continues as the longest running contest on the Internet.

    P.S. Part of the inspiration for making the IOCCC a contest goes to the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest.

    P^2.S. See the overall README for more details.

    P^3.S. See also the IOCCC FAQ.

    P^4.S. Please see my apology for the late posting of the 2001 winners.

    --
    chongo (was here) /\oo/\