Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Underhanded C Contest Is Back

Posted by Unknown on from the to-eat-your-brains dept.

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.

3 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Here's an idea by Cenan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    ... whatever ...
  2. Winning strategy by maxwell+demon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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. ;-)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  3. Re:Here's an idea by Fnord666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables