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Colossus Cipher Challenge Winner On Ada

Posted by timothy on from the ada-operiert-die-blinkenlights dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Colossus Cipher Challenge winner Joachim Schueth talks about why he settled on Ada as his language of choice to unravel a code transmitted from the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Germany, from a Lorenz SZ42 Cipher machine (used by the German High Command to relay secret messages during the World War II). 'Ada allowed me to concisely express the algorithms I wanted to implement.'"

13 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Let the raging tardfight commence by Malevolent+Tester · · Score: 2, Funny

    He should have used a real programming language like Java or VB.Net.

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    1. Re:Let the raging tardfight commence by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

      He should have used a real programming language like Java or VB.Net.
      Pffft. Real men write programs like this:

      $ cat >/bin/myprogram
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    2. Re:Let the raging tardfight commence by valentingalea · · Score: 3, Funny

      He should have used Brainfuck!

    3. Re:Let the raging tardfight commence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      You misspelled "emacs."

    4. Re:Let the raging tardfight commence by Hasmanean · · Score: 2, Funny

      Real men don't use constants. They express all quantities in their natural units, (such as the size of the known universe, or the diameter of a hydrogen atom). Needless to say, they do not require constants to convert the answers to meter-kilogram-second units.

      In fact better men than these do not even use equations. They let the laws of physics fall out of their simulations, as evanescent perennial relationships between variables.

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  2. I like the choice. by DrWho520 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Use a masochistic language to break a German code...groovy.

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  3. Wimp using ASCII by jellomizer · · Score: 2, Funny

    01010111 01101001 01101101 01110000 00100000 01110101 01110011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01000001 01010011 01000011 01001001 01001001

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  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. Re:ADA Resurgence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Was ADA 2005 that good of a language revision?
    If you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.
  6. Re:I had to learn ADA in college by kellyb9 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Actually most colleges don't want to be typecasted a "C++ school" or an "ADA school". It's more important to learn data structures and theory. If you went to a good school, the language something is written is trivial, learning the syntax should not be that difficult.

  7. Re:I had to learn ADA in college by Shinmizu · · Score: 3, Funny

    Brian As a cat once told me, "Anonymous Coward, ur doin it wrong."
  8. Re:ADA Resurgence? by Skeptical1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ada is not a backward language. Ada is a palindrome.

  9. Re:Concise??!! by hey! · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can't imagine using the words concise and Ada in the same sentence.


    Perhaps you should read what you just wrote.
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