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Whither the 19th IOCCC?

Posted by kdawson on from the now-that's-obfuscated dept.

dazedNconfuzed writes "Whatever happened to the 19th IOCCC? The opening thereof was announced over two years ago and the winners' names were posted, but the source code was never released — leaving the results of the 2006 contest unknown as we get well into 2009. Emails to questions@ioccc.org just bounce. Surely the quiet absence of a high point of geekdom becomes news at some point!"

38 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. they are still... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    figuring out the entries

    1. Re:they are still... by ta+bu+shi+da+yu · · Score: 2, Funny

      And may it ever be that way. I think the world should be spared of any more obfuscated code. :-)

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  2. Find the winners and ask them for their code by Lorens · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You have their names, shouldn't be too difficult.

  3. It's just an extra layer of obfuscation by forkazoo · · Score: 3, Funny

    The code was so obfuscated, the people running the competition were actually driven completely mad and committed suicide. Now you need to be *extra* clever to have them receive your submission, and you have to be willing to kill yourself to see the results.

  4. Re:tahreey sltil... by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2, Funny

    foiugtu rtihneg esnetir

  5. Or Underhanded C contest? by cras · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://underhanded.xcott.com/ doesn't mention anything about last year's winners and the contest ended almost 5 months ago.. The one time I bother sending a submission to these kind of contests and the contest appears to die :(

    1. Re:Or Underhanded C contest? by Xcott+Craver · · Score: 2, Informative

      I am the organizer of the UCC, and I apologize for the delay. We are normally pretty relaxed with our schedule, being academics; but this year I think more so, because the student who assists me with UCC is currently in deep hack mode on his own research project. I assure you, however, that we will have the results up within a month, or else we will lap the next contest!

  6. There, I've saved you a Google search... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's the The International Obfuscated C Code Contest.

    1. Re:There, I've saved you a Google search... by ketilwaa · · Score: 2

      No everybody didn't

  7. Re:Half-assed by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 3, Funny

    In the case of the IOCCC, you have to wade through shit to get to the good shit.

    --
    Not a sentence!
  8. slashdot front page- the new facebook? by drDugan · · Score: 4, Funny

    oh dear

    connection request: "kdawson would like to find you"

  9. Weird... this one too.... by nmoog · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've also noticed that this fortune city personal hom page from 1999 is still under construction... Any one know when it might be done?

    1. Re:Weird... this one too.... by uofitorn · · Score: 2, Funny

      At the time of my posting the parent was modded +3 Informative. Clearly, there is not an ounce of humor left in any of the mod's rickety calcium deprived bones.

      --
      "What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
      "Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
    2. Re:Weird... this one too.... by Splab · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Informative is quite a good modding in my opinion, had totally forgot about fortune city et. al.

      That brings back some memories.

    3. Re:Weird... this one too.... by neomunk · · Score: 3, Funny

      This is something I've had to tell many people many times, but I guess I'll continue doing it until it's common knowledge or the policy changes...

      Slashdot's Karmic system doesn't give any lasting Karma (beyond that posts score) for Funny moderations, so many times if people see something that's funny enough to earn Karma, and it's posted by someone who's logged in, they'll give it an Informative or Insightful. Try to keep that in mind if you meta-mod.

      I really think the policy of not giving Karma for Funny posts is worse then the problem they're trying to fix with it, if only because of the Karmic-Black-Hole that can be created by half the mods modding Funny, why the other half mod Troll or Flamebait. That allows moderation abusers to put a serious dent in a 'good' poster's Karma by way of sockpuppets or outright coordination (there is at least one site devoted to helping organize people to troll slashdot).

      But like I said the last time I posted about this, giving a funny post an Informative rating is a hack, an UGLY hack at that, but it's the best option available to the community due to a (bad, IMHO) decision from the slashdot admins.

    4. Re:Weird... this one too.... by Binestar · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The absolute best part is that the guestbook STILL WORKS.

      --
      Do you Gentoo!?
  10. Maybe it's just my tinfoil hat speaking... by Count+Fenring · · Score: 4, Funny

    One of the entries involved processing through Nth-dimensional mathematic constructs. When the judges ran it, a quantum differential between our spacetime and that of certain elder influences was generated. A portal, luckily one-way, to the den of a million screaming chains was opened, and it swallowed all of the judges, who will be consumed for ten cycles of our universe expanding and contracting, and then spit out as the final weapon in the Old Ones' war on our reality.

    Or I've been reading too much Charles Stross

    1. Re:Maybe it's just my tinfoil hat speaking... by Eric+Smith · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Or I've been reading too much Charles Stross

      There ain't no such thing as too much Charles Stross!

  11. winning entries by sdsykes_ss · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't have links to all the entries, but here is best of show: http://nanochess.110mb.com/emulator.html

    And here are my two winning entries: http://www.stephensykes.com/blog_perm.html?148

    Enjoy!

    1. Re:winning entries by sdsykes_ss · · Score: 2, Informative

      Oh, and by the way you can watch an ultra low quality video of landon curt noll presenting the winners here: http://uk.video.yahoo.com/watch/1429732/4906539 - you won't be able to make out much of the source code though.

    2. Re:winning entries by eulernet · · Score: 3, Informative

      On the same site, Knight's tour solver. 19th IOCCC. Best Small Program

      http://nanochess.110mb.com/knight.html

    3. Re:winning entries by david_thornley · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I used to hang out some (in meatspace) with Merlyn Leroy, who won a good number of IOCCC prizes. (Not, in fact, his real name.)

      He seemed like such a nice, quiet guy in person. If I hadn't known, I wouldn't have suspected him of having such a twisted mind.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  12. News by jeroen94704 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Funny thing is, their latest news item (not carried by all mirrors) is from April 4, 2008, and reads:

    Added a two IOCCC web site mirrors [...] to support the upcomming source code release of winning entries for 2006.

    Surely, announcing the upcoming source code release a year and a half after the competition closes, and then NOT doing it is, in an obfuscated way, sweetly ironic.

    --
    He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
    1. Re:News by dargaud · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's not like they plan on beating the Oscars in number of viewers when they release the source code. They can survive two hours of slashdotting without need for plenty of mirrors.

      --
      Non-Linux Penguins ?
  13. The Real News by Idiomatick · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The real news is that a site so poorly run that they cannot release the winners code after years ... Did NOT get slashdotted. How is this even remotely possible.

    1. Re:The Real News by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The real news is that a site so poorly run that they cannot release the winners code after years ... Did NOT get slashdotted. How is this even remotely possible.

      Obviously, this is because it's slashdot and we don't even try to RTFA any more. We're all so fucking smart we can just talk about it without doing any research.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  14. it was bound to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    AFAIK, after seeing all that messed-up code, they started using Python in 2006 and never looked back.

    1. Re:it was bound to happen by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I am a IOCCC winner, and I can tell you this: winning the IOCCC landed me a job.

      You know why? Because someone who can spew out a short, interesting, and obfuscated C program and still comply with the IOCCC rules, which includes cross-platform compatibility and compliance with the K&R, demonstrates 3 things:

      - He knows C very well indeed,
      - He thinks outside the box, but within established rules,
      - He's willing to work long hours just to optimize and polish a small piece of code.

      This is valid for languages other than C; there's a reason why job interviews in the field of programming often include coding something, or solving a tricky piece of code. I know for a fact that many a prospective employer treats (or at least used to treat) the IOCCC as an excellent test of C proficiency.

      I

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:it was bound to happen by SL+Baur · · Score: 3, Funny

      - He's willing to work long hours just to optimize and polish a small piece of code.

      This is valid for languages other than C; there's a reason why job interviews in the field of programming often include coding something, or solving a tricky piece of code. I know for a fact that many a prospective employer treats (or at least used to treat) the IOCCC as an excellent test of C proficiency.

      Interesting point, though time for code polishing is rarely granted IRL.

      Of course, if I were interviewing you, and you gave me a winning IOCCC entry as a code sample I'd do my utmost to have you hired on the spot based on general principles.

      Do you have a link to your winning entry?

  15. Ended up in the codebase here at work by syousef · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't know anything about the judging but I think I recognise all of the entries in the codebase at work.

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  16. oblig bash by mevets · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe MS sued them for copyright infringement...

    1. Re:oblig bash by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Funny

      Maybe they're suing Microsoft for publishing it as the OOXML specification?

  17. Geek card :) by troll8901 · · Score: 2, Funny

    My geek card is a digital certificate. You can just download a copy by yourself.

  18. IOCCC winner by troll8901 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Code or it didn't happen!

  19. Re:they all win by SL+Baur · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just taking part is a large enough honor!

    True, true and entertaining. I took part in one of the earliest IOCCCs. None of my 3 entries won anything, but at least I have bragging rights that I tried.

    1) A program that consisted of mostly all 0/O,1/l characters that converted binary to decimal/decimal to binary depending upon what name it was invoked with.

    2) A one liner that printed "Hello World!\n" with each character generated from a subprocess based on an obfuscated state table. That was apparently more obfuscated to the Pyramid kernel than to the reviewers - I got dinged at work when I ran the program right before mailing it off and a subprocess or two got disconnected and ran overnight and my project was billed CPU time. Oops!

    3) A curses/CPP hack that used as symbol and keyword names all of the different variant Unix and Unix-wannabe flavors of the time (they're all listed in one of lwall's vintage configure scripts, though I did not use that as a reference) and floated in characters from off-screen to reveal the message "System V - from now on, consider it standard"

    My favorite winner is the one that is the source that is portable to FORTRAN, /bin/sh and C.

    I wish I still had the rejection messages. Seems like it would make a good job interview item - "Hey, I can't win an obfuscated coding contest even when I *TRY*."

  20. All the likely winners... by Joey+Vegetables · · Score: 3, Funny

    are working on Perl 6.

    --

    Nonaggression works!
  21. Re:Half-assed by Abcd1234 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I had never heard of this.

    Jebus... time to turn in your geek card. The IOCCC has been operating off and on since *1984*, ffs.

  22. C++0x by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Funny

    A first C++0x draft had appeared. IOCCC judges have looked at that, and realized that the whole exercise is now futile - since every C++ programmer can rapidly crank out unreadable code in RAD mode. Case in point: we all know that the following can be legal C++ (and C):

    --a***b++;

    However, C++0x brings its to new heights; for example, the following is a perfectly legal C++0x statement:

    [](){}();