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ICFP 2003 Programming Contest Starts June 28th

Posted by timothy on from the warm-up-your-swedish dept.

mvw writes "The web pages for the ICFP 2003 programming contest are online! It starts Saturday, 28th June 0:00 GMT. As the time zone hints, this year it is organized in Sweden." From the rules page: "All programmers are invited to enter the contest, either individually or in teams. The contest offers direct, head-to-head comparison of language technology and programming skill. We have a range of prizes for the winners: cash awards, books, invitations to the conference for students, and, of course, unlimited bragging rights. The prizes will be awarded at ICFP 2003 in Uppsala this August."

33 comments

  1. Greenwich = Sweden? by brejc8 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It starts Saturday, 28th June 0:00 GMT. As the time zone hints, this year it is organized in Sweden.

    GMT, (Greenwich Mean Time) -> Sweden?
    Greenwich is in Sweden?

    --
    Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
    1. Re:Greenwich = Sweden? by Randolpho · · Score: 1

      Good point... I thought Sweeden was with the rest of Europe at +1 GMT

      --
      "Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
      -Marilyn Manson
    2. Re:Greenwich = Sweden? by mvw · · Score: 1
      The formulation was weak, you're right. The original version was: please note the Time Zone. :)

      Regards,
      Marc

    3. Re:Greenwich = Sweden? by Kynde · · Score: 1

      Good point... I thought Sweeden was with the rest of Europe at +1 GMT.

      I don't quite follow what you mean with "rest of Europe", but if you're talking about CET (Central European Time) which Sweden also belongs to it's currently GMT+2 (due to daylight-savings time).

      Even Greenwich is currently GMT+1, because GMT does not make daylight savings changes...

      --
      1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
  2. Isn't this a month early? by FroMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I thought they usually had the contest late July and early August. I seem to remember last year not being able to look at the contest since it was my anniversery that week-end.

    Personlly I look forward to IOCCC, much more interesting competition. But that contest hasn't been open for nearly two years now. :-(

    --
    Norris/Palin 2012
    Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
    1. Re:Isn't this a month early? by mvw · · Score: 1
      I thought they usually had the contest late July and early August.

      Me too. For better organizing my schedule this year, I tried to find out the approximate date of the contest months ago already. But t seems my mail never reached the final contest organizing people, or they never answered.

      Only thanks to a friendly computer scientist, to whom I wrote first and who has only remotely to do with the contest, I found out about the date .. just three days in advance.

      So I hope next year the date will be much less surprising, I would really like to know the date about a month in advance.

      Regards,
      Marc

    2. Re:Isn't this a month early? by FroMan · · Score: 1

      Maybe you were entered into the "lightening" round of announcements. :-)

      --
      Norris/Palin 2012
      Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
    3. Re:Isn't this a month early? by kruntiform · · Score: 1

      They do some incredible and brilliant things in the IOCCC, but I can't help thinking that deliberately obfuscating C is immoral somehow :P

      What I like about the ICFP is the lack of restrictions. You can solve the problem using whatever tools and programming languages you like, as an individual or as part of a team. I don't think there are any other major programming contests like that.

    4. Re:Isn't this a month early? by FroMan · · Score: 1



      Some wise man is going to make a RPPC (Readable Perl Programming Contest) some day.

      I think obfusicatin C is a cool idea of a contest. Its fun to try and figure out what other programmers come up with. And its kind of fun to try an entry out.

      What I like about the ICFP is the lack of restrictions.

      Aw heck, in the IOCCC you can solve whatever problem you want, you have to use a specific language though.

      In ICFP you have to solve their specific problem with any language you want.

      Six of one, half a dozen of another. :-P

      --
      Norris/Palin 2012
      Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
    5. Re:Isn't this a month early? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, it certainly falls pretty badly this year...

      This weekend is Gay Pride all over the world, and even hackers have sexuality (not equal to sex)... I for once wouldn't miss the Parade or going out to the discos in fancy clothes and wonderful drag high heels for fluffing and having lots of sane fun...

      programming is cool, but there's more to life than solving programming problems... anyway, considering everyone will be running their code in their own machine, the LISP/Scheme gang will rock this year: we have our environments finely tuned, Good will finally prevail... (joking, btw, LISP rocks, but other languages rock as well... I for stakes, like Erlang, OCaml and Haskell (in this decreasing order) and am studying Oz, which is pretty interesing as well)

      good luck to the participants, but remember the fight for freedom and rightful rights (granted by Constitutions all over the Democracies), even if you are straight, an unfair law is unfair to everybody, not just us queer people...

      enough rambling
      __END__

    6. Re:Isn't this a month early? by mvw · · Score: 1

      Some wise man is going to make a RPPC (Readable Perl Programming Contest) some day.


      Scary. It would prove several of me beliefs completely wrong. :)

  3. Speculation... by jjkivilu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if the picture ("preview-fancy.jpg") on the front page is supposed to give us a small hint about what the task will concern? Something involving racing, like optimal route finding and intelligent vehicle steering/controlling?

    1. Re:Speculation... by mvw · · Score: 1

      The appropriate model for racing tracks tracks might be a T(o)uring machine, where you glue the tape start and end sections together. Just kidding :-)

  4. Mailing List by Randolpho · · Score: 0

    Well, the mailing list seems to be down. Given the lack of posts on this topic, I doubt it's been slashdotted, but you never know. :)

    --
    "Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
    -Marilyn Manson
  5. Obligatory by Mr.+Sketch · · Score: 2, Insightful

    2003-06-19 18:37:54 ICFP2003 Programming Contest (developers,programming) (rejected)

    I'm just a little bitter thats all. I had the scoop on this almost a week ago, sigh.

    But on the on-topic side, I plan on participating and doing my entry in PHP, just for kicks :). If there are any other PHP programmers that would like to be on my team feel free to respond here or e-mail me, the rules don't say what the max number of people we can have on a team is.

    --
    Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
    1. Re:Obligatory by PhilipMatarese · · Score: 4, Interesting

      the rules don't say what the max number of people we can have on a team is

      Team Slashdot?

    2. Re:Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Team Slashdot: disqualified for using proprietary SCO code.

    3. Re:Obligatory by haystor · · Score: 1

      Sure, let's start the slashdot team.

      I propose we work with:

      LISP, Win2k and emacs.

      Assuming that's ok with everyone we can get started.

      --
      t
  6. Re:Isn't this a month early? (reposted) by FroMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They do some incredible and brilliant things in the IOCCC, but I can't help thinking that deliberately obfuscating C is immoral somehow :P

    Some wise man is going to make a RPPC (Readable Perl Programming Contest) some day.

    I think obfusicatin C is a cool idea of a contest. Its fun to try and figure out what other programmers come up with. And its kind of fun to try an entry out.

    What I like about the ICFP is the lack of restrictions.

    Aw heck, in the IOCCC you can solve whatever problem you want, you have to use a specific language though.

    In ICFP you have to solve their specific problem with any language you want.

    Six of one, half a dozen of another. :-P

    --
    Norris/Palin 2012
    Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
  7. Acronym by cgrawls · · Score: 5, Informative

    ICFP stands for International Conference on Functional Programming. Neither the /. story nor the contest website make this clear.

    Also, interestingly, the contest allows any programming language to be entered, functional or not. Sounds like a challenge to the procedural and OO programmers out there :).

    1. Re:Acronym by darthscsi · · Score: 1

      Many of the functional languages I know are also OO. You haven't seen weird until you have a functional object.

    2. Re:Acronym by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1
      You haven't seen weird until you have a functional object.

      Bah, objects are just a poor man's closures. Or was it the other way around...

      Either way, if the people I work with could make any of their objects function properly, it would make my debugging sessions much easier! ;-)

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    3. Re:Acronym by arth1 · · Score: 1

      Well, they could hardly call it International Conference on Dysfunctional Programming, now could they? :-)

      As for allowing any programming language, well, the programming language "SORTA" won IOCCC's best in show back in '91...

      Regards,
      --
      *Art

  8. Re:Isn't this a month early? (reposted) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Aw heck, in the IOCCC you can solve whatever problem
    > you want, you have to use a specific language though

    No, you don't: you may choose to solve a problem in Ada in the IOCCC, if you write an Ada interpreter in a COBOL interpreter in a PL/I interpreter in C (doing that might score high with the judges, too)

  9. Runs on your own box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    From their web site:
    • This year you will run your entry on your own computer
    Hrmm... I wonder if this portends anything about the compute-power needed for the problem... Like, I'd guess that people with faster CPUs won't necessarily have an enormous advantage over the others...
    1. Re:Runs on your own box by ozten · · Score: 0

      My entry will actually just be a bunch of people doing the calculations with a slide rule and typing the answers into a terminal. So going to win.

  10. in the faq by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    Well this is mentioned in the FAQ:

    • Will the CPU speed of the computer used for the task matter? (Not for the development task, but for computing task results.) Will people with just a 166-MHz machine be disadvantaged against people with current hardware?

      Give me a faster computer anyday. I can't see a situation in which a faster machine would not be some advantage. However, the speed of your CPU will not directly influence your placing.

    Interesting to see what the competition will be...
  11. Shameless Karmawhoring. by The+Cydonian · · Score: 1

    A time zone converter for all your needs.

    --
    More than mere navel gazing.
  12. Open Source Erlang Web Site Offline by mvw · · Score: 1
    Timing is a bit unlucky this year. The Erlang site is not reachable right now, just days before the ICFP contest.

    Here is some info what happened:

    A few people have asked me "what's happening with Erlang.org?". I called Kent today. Seems they've moved some servers from one building to another and it's taking longer than expected to get the external network connection up again (i.e. several days). Until they do that, erlang.org, erlang.se and the mailing list all don't work.

    The UU mirror seems ok:

    http://www.csd.uu.se/ftp/mirror/erlang/

    Matthias

    Regards,
    Marc

    1. Re:Open Source Erlang Web Site Offline by mvw · · Score: 1

      I opened #erlang_icfp at irc.freenode.net

      See you.

  13. What? by a24431 · · Score: 1

    Are you kidding-Unlimited Bragging Rights? COOL! Gotta re-write the constitution... or at least make a new amendment... a24431 mailto:a24431@netscape.net

  14. It has begun. by Randolpho · · Score: 2, Informative

    The contest has begun. Looks like it's best-path pathfinding.

    --
    "Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
    -Marilyn Manson
    1. Re:It has begun. by mvw · · Score: 1

      Now it is over.

      Three days were not much for that task. I wasted most of the time writing tools and getting a proper implementation of the specs.

      Ideal would have been a team of 1 toolmaker, 1 tester, 1 strategy/optimizing guy, 1 coordinator. And of course more libs in the background ready for various optimization task, plus something to hack together visual editors very quickly.

      I wish I had known better ways to interface to the GIMP, it turned out to be a useful editor for me, but i only managed file based communications.

      Regards,
      Marc