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Real Time (as in Live) Programming Competition
KO writes "On Wednesday the 24th of May at Loop Bar in Melbourne (Australia) fourteen teams of programmers gathered for the first ESCI LiveCoda real-time programming competition. Possibly the first performance based real-time programming competition. Before a packed night club with live music provided by Simulus and the Vs Chorus Crew, each team had just ten minutes to write a program which could correct a corrupted image.""
Although each member of the team was placed at a separate computer, each computer shared the program source allowing the team to collaborate on a single file in real-time. The developing source code was then projected onto Loop's twenty-three foot screen along with the compilation errors and the current state of the corrupted image.
The evening started furiously with Booming Egg and Machinemongers taking the stage for some extreme Java action. However, a bug in the competition code resulted in only the first 512 bytes of their program being compiled. The organizer loaded up the code, made a patch recompiled and everything was ready to go.
The Toasted Monkeys then took over with C prowess and a team strategy which would lead them to victory in 5 minutes and 40 seconds. The Python crew Hot Coffee tried to match that time but we unsuccessful. Similarly, unalias -a started strong but a screen of C++ errors seemed to slow down their progress. A second Python crew, CodeMonkeys, also didn't deliver the time required to get them into first place.
Walking on to toast their freshly prepared martini's, Martinis All Round loaded up Awk and were set. Though with a finish time of 8 minutes and 40 seconds they only managed second place. The Java Speed Players also did not threaten pole position.
The C hackers 17 Hours Left finished in 7 minutes and 30 seconds taking second position before the Unix Tools stepped in for the real upset of the evening. In just 3 minutes 45 they had a C program which seemed to correct an image of Stonehenge with a blue sky. The crowd applauded but unfortunately the sky was supposed to be a sunset red. Within 2 minutes and 15 seconds they had fixed the problem, but not fast enough to take first place.
The C group Last Minute did not post a faster time and the Awk Team Cthulu proved that alcohol was not a performance enhancing drug in this context. A fact supported by them printing, "we are so screwed" to standard error.
LiveCoda demonstrated a novel use of computers for entertainment. In doing so it challenged programming to transform from an isolated activity to a collaborative performance art. Furthermore, it challenged the night club environment to accommodate a more intellectual activity. The success of LiveCoda in both cases illustrates a strong potential for programming to improve audience understanding and participation in new forms of digital art.
Although each member of the team was placed at a separate computer, each computer shared the program source allowing the team to collaborate on a single file in real-time. The developing source code was then projected onto Loop's twenty-three foot screen along with the compilation errors and the current state of the corrupted image.
The evening started furiously with Booming Egg and Machinemongers taking the stage for some extreme Java action. However, a bug in the competition code resulted in only the first 512 bytes of their program being compiled. The organizer loaded up the code, made a patch recompiled and everything was ready to go.
The Toasted Monkeys then took over with C prowess and a team strategy which would lead them to victory in 5 minutes and 40 seconds. The Python crew Hot Coffee tried to match that time but we unsuccessful. Similarly, unalias -a started strong but a screen of C++ errors seemed to slow down their progress. A second Python crew, CodeMonkeys, also didn't deliver the time required to get them into first place.
Walking on to toast their freshly prepared martini's, Martinis All Round loaded up Awk and were set. Though with a finish time of 8 minutes and 40 seconds they only managed second place. The Java Speed Players also did not threaten pole position.
The C hackers 17 Hours Left finished in 7 minutes and 30 seconds taking second position before the Unix Tools stepped in for the real upset of the evening. In just 3 minutes 45 they had a C program which seemed to correct an image of Stonehenge with a blue sky. The crowd applauded but unfortunately the sky was supposed to be a sunset red. Within 2 minutes and 15 seconds they had fixed the problem, but not fast enough to take first place.
The C group Last Minute did not post a faster time and the Awk Team Cthulu proved that alcohol was not a performance enhancing drug in this context. A fact supported by them printing, "we are so screwed" to standard error.
LiveCoda demonstrated a novel use of computers for entertainment. In doing so it challenged programming to transform from an isolated activity to a collaborative performance art. Furthermore, it challenged the night club environment to accommodate a more intellectual activity. The success of LiveCoda in both cases illustrates a strong potential for programming to improve audience understanding and participation in new forms of digital art.
What everyone in the packed night club was thinking:
What the **** is this, and where are the strippers?
the simplicity of the limeted instruction set of C wins the day. I sometimes wish more managers would understand this as they continue to "migrate" to more and more complex languages, when all that is needed is core C and some good, debugged libs.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
I can see the old-fashioned middle-aged writer on the sports page now:
"First it was poker on ESPN2. This non-sport on a sports channel was tolerated because millions of men reminisced about great poker nights and episodes of Maverick. We didn't really care about the players or the artificial tension, we just watched the games and thought 'I could do that!'
"Then came the spelling bee. A million men sat up from their recliners and muttered a collective 'what the--' when we saw our first spelling bee on a sports channel. The soccer moms had invaded, and we couldn't even get a date. But still we tolerated it.
"Men, it may now be too late to hold our ground. We soon may be forced to retreat from the sports channels and give them over to the rest of the world. You see, I have just gotten wind of plans to air a programming competition on ESPN3. Yes, programming. As in computer programming. As in a room full of geeks pounding out computer code as quickly as they can. First team with a working program wins.
"The geeks have already pushed their way onto TV with their video game tournaments. Some even have the nerve to call themselves 'cyberathletes'. But the games have been at least entertaining; it's like a cheap action movie without all the boring plot. This though...this is different. This is programming. Armchair quarterbacks of America, it's time we stood up to the networks and told them we want no part of the ruination of the sport channels. It's time we demand a return to basics. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey. Maybe a little NASCAR, boxing and some soccer (yes, I said soccer) to pad out the programming. I'm not going to stand for this any more. I want my ESPN!"
(Yes I'm fully aware this wasn't broadcast on ESPN or anything else...relax, it's a bit of speculative humor)
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
The ACM programming contest has been around for a while although not so much at strip clubs.
Obviously these oldskool fogies can't keep up with the leet haxtors.
http://www.portcommodore.com/pics/contest1.jpg
I've done a couple in high schools (with PETs back then, the first we got fifth place, the second was third) And a couple at the Vintage Computer Festival (where we had to code a game from scratch on an 8-bit system in 3 hours), this one (picture) I got second place (Jeri to the right won with Pimp Sim on the PET to my C64 game) I won the next one though with a game reminicent to kaboom called Thrift Score on the 64.
For some reason a contest to write code to correct an image just doesn't seem all that fun.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I was doing "live" programming competitions in high school. What exactly is special about this again? That they just happened to have a fancy setup and a live audience?
The majority of the programming competitions I participated in had multiple problems and, in the case of ties, whichever team produced their answers first came in ahead. At the easier contest, the majority of the problems could be solved inside 10 minutes too.
So can someone explain to me what was so interesting here?
How is this different from the high school programming competition I participated in? 30 teams in the university's student union, given up to 3 hours to finish 7 programs (and in the advanced division, the 5th through 7th programs are much harder than the sample problems on the website). If you submit something and get it wrong, they don't tell you why. Even if it gives the right results on your test data. If you submit something and get it right, you get a colored balloon tied to your table - so while you're in the midst of programming and finding a obscure error under time pressure, you can see the other teams getting balloons.
So what's special about this "real time" competition other than the silly names and the nightclub?
"Sebastian you're in a mess. They called you King of all the Hipsters, is it true or are you still the Queen?" -- B