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8th Annual ICFP Contest

Posted by Zonk on from the push-the-button,-frank dept.

mauricec writes "Think your favorite programming language is the best one out there? Put it to the test in this year's International Conference on Functional Programming's annual Programming Contest. The contest is coming up in a little under 4 weeks! This year's competition rewards programmers who can plan ahead. As before, we'll announce a problem and give you three days to solve it. Two weeks later, we'll announce a change to the problem specification and give you one day to adapt your program to the new spec. More info on the contest and prizes is on the contest's web page."

3 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. FP by mistersooreams · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are some comments already saying "if the program could be written in three days, couldn't they write a new one from scratch in one day?" The answer is that a very fast programmer probably could. But what would the point be? The object of this exercise is to show off just how generic a program written in a functional language can be. It really is possible to abstract everything, leading perhaps to the famous paradox "Everything can be solved by adding another layer of abstraction, except having too many layers of abstraction."

    Putting that aside, I think this is a great idea for a competition. I hadn't heard of it before this one, and have only recently got into functional programming myself. I'm a new-found convert to ML, and find it interesting to be forced to think about a problem in a completely new, and usually recursive, way. ML also has some imperative elements but I prefer to avoid them as far as possible. I'll attempt to make an entry to this contest, although I doubt I'm at the relevant level of expertise yet.

    I'd be interested to hear what languages other Slashdotters think would be most appropriate to a contest like this. Lisp gurus, start your engines!

    --
    apterous.org
  2. Re:Sounds like my clients by ^DA · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Change of spec sounds like real life to me. Customers rarely know excactly what they want before they have a working system up and running. THEN they start to see the possibilities.

    Frustrating? Yes! But we have to live with it. We just need to make them understand that the project will be delayed and it will cost more and why this is so if they change the specs late in the project.

    Our job as developers is to make the system easy to change bacause we all know this will happen.

  3. Re:second row by archeopterix · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Also the top prize is $700.00. If you spend every waking moment on it for 4 days (700 / 96) it amounts to a CHANCE at $7.29 an hour. Explain THAT to your significant other.
    Challenge accepted.

    "Hey, significant other, I'm not into it for the money"

    Worked for me. YMMV.