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The IOCCC Competition Is Back

Posted by samzenpus on from the welcome-back dept.

Rui Lopes writes "After a 5 year hiatus, the IOCCC (International Obfuscated C Code Contest) is back! This marks the 20th edition of the contest. Submissions are open between 12-Nov-2011 11:00 UTC and 12-Jan-2012 12:12 UTC. Don't forget to check this year's rules and guidelines."

7 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. It'd be nice if ... by fsckmnky · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They created a competition for the most well structured, well documented, clean and correct code.

    Most C coders seem to achieve obfuscation without any additional incentive.

    1. Re:It'd be nice if ... by masternerdguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is a good competition because it helps exploit the guts of C in new and exciting ways. Go back to your clean and neat database client if you can't play with the cowboys.

      --
      To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
    2. Re:It'd be nice if ... by Hazel+Bergeron · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most C coders seem to achieve obfuscation without any additional incentive.

      Nonsense. C is simple and, while some smart programmers think it's necessary to over-use the preprocessor (even the Linux kernel is sometimes guilty), it's a language you can learn once and apply productively for the rest of your life.

      Contrast this with the ten dozen other fly-by-night half-baked languages which have flooded the marketplace over the past year, each with their uninteresting quirks of syntactic sugar, competing on the basis of some uniquely uninteresting difference which can almost always be trivially implemented in any of the alternatives. They are hard to read in the same way that German is hard to read to someone who has only been reading German for a year: skill and speed comes through practice with the language, not from the ego of its authors.

    3. Re:It'd be nice if ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nonsense. C is simple and, while some smart programmers think it's necessary to over-use the preprocessor (even the Linux kernel is sometimes guilty), it's a language you can learn once and apply productively for the rest of your life.

      Contrast this with the ten dozen other fly-by-night half-baked languages which have flooded the marketplace over the past year, each with their uninteresting quirks of syntactic sugar, competing on the basis of some uniquely uninteresting difference which can almost always be trivially implemented in any of the alternatives. They are hard to read in the same way that German is hard to read to someone who has only been reading German for a year: skill and speed comes through practice with the language, not from the ego of its authors.

      +1, it all started going downhill when :
      - professional language designers abdicated their role, and the void was filled by amateurs
      - people who use these languages have no fucking clue what they're doing and we're all paying the price
      - corporations hyped languages for their own purposes and languages stagnated or worse were crapified to an absurd level (witness java).

  2. The Internet is based on C by Required+Snark · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I find all the "C sucks" comments to be both amusing and stupid. Without C code there would literally be no Internet. Every bit you are sending and receiving uses C. The two operating systems that represent 99.99% or more of the running computers that are online run C. Both Windows and Linux use the BSD TCP/IP stack.

    If C did not get the job done for this kind of computing then it would have been replaced. The fact that C thrives in the systems programming domain is a tribute to it's utility.

    A proficient C coder can write clear, maintainable, efficient code that runs on many platforms. This requires both skill and practice. Not everyone is capable of doing this. It requires the ability to keep multiple competing abstractions in mind when coding. I think a lot of people try this and find it difficult and then blame the language. Those who persevere and learn this style of working can usually move on to other kinds of programming and also do excellent work.

    Some problem domains require different languages and different skill sets. Personally, I like writing code where I know that if I were to look at the assembly code generated by the compiler I can see how it relates to the C code I wrote. I rarely do this, but it's good to know that I can if I want to. I'm doing any C coding now, because I always use the appropriate language to the task. But I also know that my C coding skills give me a distinct advantage in solving difficult problems, no matter what they are,

    --
    Why is Snark Required?
  3. Re:Underhanded C contest should return by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Then you should read Ken Thompson on putting backdoors in C compilers. Do you trust your build system?

  4. Because D is such a heavily used language... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A number of quick points... Some people just don't know, so here are some practical speaking points...

    -C has been around longer than most of the non-C programmers alive. That includes you people on this site, which has the smartest people, from one of the most divisive areas in the civil space: the "tech wars".

    -D was such a better language... also, C++ because we never hear about C anymore.

    -Java is on it's way out, being deprecated by the largest company in the world, which also deprecated Flash (on mobile) which Adobe just acquiesced to, replaced by Google's new iteration. Maybe not in the next 5 years, but it can no longer grow... it will have to get smaller with less support.

    -Objective-C, used by Apple Inc., the largest company in the world, is a wholly-compatible superset of (ANSI) C. There are no signs of change here. Big surprise, it's all the same hardware components, just in larger capacities, at faster rates, and smaller form-factor. C can't help us with the flux capacitor... but that has not been added to the standard CPU, memory, memory storage, etc. model.

    -Google announced that Android will run a C-like-language in the native space that uses the CPU and GPU. Even with Dart coming our way...

    -CUDA... C is relevant in other (all) GPU spaces which is the go-to-guy, for the moment, to eak out more performance from a machine.

    -And here is where the feelings get hurt: In college, I strattled the EE/CS line while being firmly EE. EEs learn C because it teaches them valuable things about the hardware, being a very light obfuscation. CS departments tend to concentrate on, well, anything else. Flavors of the year, interesting projects, etc. That is their place. My older brother went the CS route, 8 years before I got my turn and went EE. I admire him and his success greatly but I know, push came to shove, I can talk about certain topics without talking about garbage collectors and universal typing.

    So, please, if you've never used C in any significant way, just don't comment. Listen. People, young and old, have something to tell you about the most significant programming language ever invented.

    And to bring this all together: When you are trying to eke out CPU cycles so your 3D rendering is above 60 fps on that mobile device, you will know why closeness to hardware and C, in particular, may be your best friend. Or a C-like language...

    Another way to look at it: People who know C and have worked with it, can't just unknown it. They know what you non-C people know, but also have other experience. If MOST of them say C is indispensable, then how about you do the one thing some Tech Asshole never do: Take someone else's advice. And STFU.

    Can we just talk about something else that is awesome and not caught up in this stupid argument?