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IOCCC 2006 is now open
leob writes "The 19th International Obfuscated C Code Contest opened one minute before the New Year to qualify for the 2006 designation. Entries accepted until the end of February. Start writing and submitting your entries now!"
They could always create an International Obfuscated AJAX competition, then every entrant could be a winner.
Either I'm dumber than I had hoped, have worked with nimwitted programmers, or (much more likely) most AJAX implementations are just completely illogic to follow. When reviewing "Web 2.0" work, I often miss the logic and structure of C.
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I for one find it appalling that only C is allowed. What about Plus or Sharp? They have the same rights as the high and mighty C does. What this amounts to is pure and simple racism. This brings us right back to the coding rights movement of the 80's. I cannot believe we are still struggling.
I'm so mad, I'm calling Jess-C Jackson. He'll get Al #ton on the phone as well.
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Having the 2006 competition run in 2007...
It's like they are setting out to create a contest that is unclear and needlessly difficult to understand.
AJAX is still a very immature technology. With some time, it will improve. The same is true for most technologies, including Java and .NET. What we're seeing with all of them is a move towards the capabilities of Lisp. That's not surprising, considering that Lisp is the mathematical underpinning of programmin language theory.
The ideal situation would be for AJAX to ditch JavaScript and XML, and instead just use Common Lisp or Scheme as the language of choice, and s-exprs to represent the formatted data. Maybe it shouldn't really be called "AJAX" at that point, but the end result would still be superior to what we have to deal with now.
When you build your technology upon proven and mathematically-inherent concepts such as those offered by Common Lisp, you end up with consistency, stability, sensibility and reliability. In short, your product improves greatly when you build upon a solid foundation of theory and practice. Common Lisp offers just that base.
In the future obfuscated C and perl programs will be used as captchas.
Make a C mutator: It takes C, parses, and applies a bunch of randomizing but semantically preserving transformations. Make it small, and compact.
Then run your code through it a few times and submit it.
Test your net with Netalyzr
#include <stdio.h>
static const int one = 1;
#if one == 1
static const int result = 2;
#else
static const int result = 42;
#endif
int main(void)
{
printf("1 + 1 = %d\n", result);
return 0;
}
Leob, I just thought of a New Years Resolution for you.
Why bother.
...to find skilled Perl programmers.
You submit your OBSFUCATOR after you reobsfucate it a few times.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Lethyos, I just thought of a New years Resolution for you.
http://www0.us.ioccc.org/years.html - 17th was 2004. 19th is... Hmm... Yeah, 2006. And the contest started in 2006. So yeah, 2006.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
A contestant would submit a piece of code together with the specification of what the code was supposed to do, but no other documentation.
The judges would propose a straightforward change in the specification.
The code and the revised specification would be given to an impartial panel of a hundred programmers, selected at random from the ranks of people working for a living writing code. Each of them would be asked to modify the code to meet the revised spec. They would also be instructed to fix any bugs they noticed in the code they were given. The revised code and spec would then submit each one to an impartial panel of 100 SQA testers, selected at random from the ranks of people who work for a living testing code.
The winner would be the contestant whose code, after being modified by other programmers, passed the largest number of SQA tests.
(And, yes, SQA failures due to unfixed bugs in the original code would count against the contestant).
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It was supposed to be a joke about how secretive some closed-source vendors can be and how they try everything in their power to keep their code secret. It was supposed to be absurdly funny. Apparently it fell a little(lot?) short.
I cannot _ this any further. Do ! + me.
Or put another way
(Here's a pointer - you think you're sharp? You had to dig your own grave, and I'll pound it out your colon. Forget the carrot, this is the stick. I cannot underscore this any further. Do not cross me.)
Now where is that hacked MS Vista source code?
Okay, the 2006 "Explanation of Why IOCCC Is Not Just Ugly Code" is now underway.
The winning entries are pieces of art, not pieces of dung. They look like they should do one thing, but they do another. They arrange the code in a visually pleasing but maintenance-proof way. They choose some concept and take it to the absurd limit, all within a tiny amount of code.
My favorite past entry is John Tromp's maze generator. In seven lines of code, he produces random mazes. The variables are named M, A, Z, E instead of useful functional mnemonics. The source code is formatted to LOOK like a maze. And even in this maze which is the source code, the passages in the maze spell out the word 'maze.' This is not just putting a pig on the lipstick, this is making the pig look *good*.
[
but it really is time to stop it already. We shouldn't be programming in C anymore.
I missed writing programs in C. Anyways, I think, the creator of Perl has also won that competition. C rules/rocks!!!
a ge)/
Ozgur Uksal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_langu
I wish I could moderate your reply as funny. :)
Why bother.
They should run a Perl version with prizes for actually clear code. But I suppose it would be too difficult. Or maybe it would end up as a Loebner contest-style contest: lots of entries, no winners. Oh well.
Here's something I wrote a while ago. It's not up to snuff for the IOCCC but it might give some Slashdotters an interesting challenge.
The solution is out there on the web somewhere, but I think it would be fairly hard to Google for it.
Just explain what this function does: