The Underhanded C Contest Is Back

Xcott Craver writes "After several years of inactivity, the Underhanded C contest has returned. The object is to write a short, readable, innocent-looking computer program that nevertheless performs some evil function for reasons that are not obvious under code review. The prize is a $200 gift certificate to ThinkGeek." The deadline is July 4th, so get to hacking.

Comments

Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Software is already underhanded and obscure enough as it is. I mean using it. How about a "clear and fucking obvious" contest? How about error messages that mean something? "The side by side configuration is incorrect". Parse that.

Re:Here's an idea

[Cenan]

Agreed.

How about a contest where the submitted code does exactly what the specs say, every time, on any hardware. The victor will be the one who writes a piece of code to spec, sits an untrained user in front of the app, and it behaves exactly as expected. Extra points if the user is successfully able to decipher any and all error messages and correct input without interference from anyone. Once you have a grip on that shit, then you can start doing cute/useless shit like this.

Re:Here's an idea

[Fnord666]

The hard part is writing up specs that accurately reflect what is actually needed. Often, specs are ambiguous, incomplete or simply incorrect.

Not to mention the fact that even if they are clear, complete, and correct today, the user will want something else tomorrow.

Re:actual challenge this year

[theM_xl]

This is an obviously needed utility for C programmer community, in order to gain some "friends" on ????book.

You don't have many friends, do you. :-)

Winning strategy

[maxwell demon]

The winning entry will be one which doesn't only do the evil task asked for, but at the same time, in a way that the contest runners won't notice it, also manipulates the contest database in order to put itself as the winner. ;-)