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ICFP Programming Contest 2014

139 points by thoughtpolice 12y ago

thoughtpolice 12y ago
In the interest of promoting friends/coworkers: The contest this year is a really cool challenge, and was set up by one of my partners in crime, Duncan. (Of course, ICFP is always a cool challenge and is always set up by good people :) Get a team together and start competing!
- eru 12y ago
  > (Of course, ICFP is always a cool challenge and is always set up by good people :) I agree in general. Only that car engine / fuel challenge a few years ago was really obtuse. (And when I met the guys who set it up, they were so happy about it. ;o) Lambda the Ultimate and the satelites were really cool!
agumonkey 12y ago
Enjoyed a lot watching teams live streaming their work on youtube. High value time spender.
- lucvh 12y ago
  Do you know if any teams will be doing the same this year? Would love to watch.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    I don't even remember how I got to follow them. Maybe through reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2bngvp/the_icfp_programming_contest_starts_friday_1200/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2bngvp/the_icfp... http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/2blpt6/icfp_contest_starts_in_less_than_24h/ http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/2blpt6/icfp_contest...
btczeus 12y ago
For the love of Zeus use logarithmic graphs for the price! http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zczsg2012-01-01zeg2014-07-25ztgWzm1g10zm2g25zl http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zczsg2012-01... It does a lot more sense, doesn't it?
- ska 12y ago
  It probably makes even more sense in the right comment thread...
kenjackson 12y ago
While I'm a fan of the ICFP, I do feel as if the questions are a bit too full of themselves (for lack of a better term). While I'm sure they are trying to remove ambiguity, but the way they are couched and their length make them a lot less approachable than they should be. I feel like in about 1/10 the wording and narrative complexity they could create an equally interesting programming challenge.
- clamprecht 12y ago
  I agree, but I think that's part of the challenge - boiling down the problem to its essentials, and ignoring the unnecessary stuff.
  - drdaeman 12y ago
    No me, nothing beats ICFPC'07 (http://save-endo.cs.uu.nl/ http://save-endo.cs.uu.nl/) The whole task was just formulated as "save Endo". A spec of Fuun DNA (a virtual machine), Endo's DNA and a two pictures were provided. That's about all contestants were told. Then, we had to discover Endo's DNA contained loads of fun things inside. Oh, ICFPC'06 was incredibly cool, too, but I didn't participated at that time and only took the task years after that. Don't want to sound whining but other years are more conventional (a complex, but mostly well-defined task) so less fun in my opinion.
owlish 12y ago
So... what does ICFP stand for? I've looked on their site, Twitter, and GitHub, but maybe I'm missing something obvious?
- akavel 12y ago
  One level up, at: http://icfpcontest.org/ http://icfpcontest.org/ [The ICFP Programming Contest 2014 is the 17th instance of the annual programming contest series sponsored by The ACM SIGPLAN] International Conference on Functional Programming.
  - owlish 12y ago
    Ah, missed that in the wall of text. Thanks!
keenerd 12y ago
(Posted about the contest an hour earlier, only got two votes. Oh well.) If I am reading the problem correctly, there is no interactive component this year? You get one submission and don't get to test it against anything else. > It is not essential that the judges be able to run your code So is this a beauty pageant?
- thedufer 12y ago
  > We request (but do not strictly require) that you include in your .tar.gz/.zip various additional material That's the part they don't have to be able to run. They won't even try unless your entry is in the running, it seems. The .ghc and .gcc (the actual submission) does have to run, since that's what's being scored.
  - keenerd 12y ago
    It makes a little more sense if you don't think about the game as an assembly of parts, which isn't really explained anywhere. For example there is some strategy with trying to make the ghosts be as bad as possible, so they are in a nice neat line immediately after a power pill. As usual, kudos to the team for making a puzzle with so many layers.
personZ 12y ago
So the strategy for the GCC (the Lambda-man controller) is that you actually build a compiler/pre-processor for it in some other tool, versus just logically solving the problem with the given instruction set? The details on the ghosts are dramatically clearer than the details on the Lambda man.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Fando 12y ago
The only thing I know about functional programming is that I know nothing about it.

139 points by thoughtpolice 12y ago

In the interest of promoting friends/coworkers: The contest this year is a really cool challenge, and was set up by one of my partners in crime, Duncan. (Of course, ICFP is always a cool challenge and is always set up by good people :) Get a team together and start competing!

eru 12y ago
> (Of course, ICFP is always a cool challenge and is always set up by good people :) I agree in general. Only that car engine / fuel challenge a few years ago was really obtuse. (And when I met the guys who set it up, they were so happy about it. ;o) Lambda the Ultimate and the satelites were really cool!

agumonkey 12y ago

Enjoyed a lot watching teams live streaming their work on youtube. High value time spender.

lucvh 12y ago
Do you know if any teams will be doing the same this year? Would love to watch.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  I don't even remember how I got to follow them. Maybe through reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2bngvp/the_icfp_programming_contest_starts_friday_1200/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2bngvp/the_icfp... http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/2blpt6/icfp_contest_starts_in_less_than_24h/ http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/2blpt6/icfp_contest...

btczeus 12y ago

For the love of Zeus use logarithmic graphs for the price! http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zczsg2012-01-01zeg2014-07-25ztgWzm1g10zm2g25zl http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zczsg2012-01... It does a lot more sense, doesn't it?

ska 12y ago
It probably makes even more sense in the right comment thread...

kenjackson 12y ago

While I'm a fan of the ICFP, I do feel as if the questions are a bit too full of themselves (for lack of a better term). While I'm sure they are trying to remove ambiguity, but the way they are couched and their length make them a lot less approachable than they should be. I feel like in about 1/10 the wording and narrative complexity they could create an equally interesting programming challenge.

clamprecht 12y ago
I agree, but I think that's part of the challenge - boiling down the problem to its essentials, and ignoring the unnecessary stuff.
- drdaeman 12y ago
  No me, nothing beats ICFPC'07 (http://save-endo.cs.uu.nl/ http://save-endo.cs.uu.nl/) The whole task was just formulated as "save Endo". A spec of Fuun DNA (a virtual machine), Endo's DNA and a two pictures were provided. That's about all contestants were told. Then, we had to discover Endo's DNA contained loads of fun things inside. Oh, ICFPC'06 was incredibly cool, too, but I didn't participated at that time and only took the task years after that. Don't want to sound whining but other years are more conventional (a complex, but mostly well-defined task) so less fun in my opinion.

owlish 12y ago

So... what does ICFP stand for? I've looked on their site, Twitter, and GitHub, but maybe I'm missing something obvious?

akavel 12y ago
One level up, at: http://icfpcontest.org/ http://icfpcontest.org/ [The ICFP Programming Contest 2014 is the 17th instance of the annual programming contest series sponsored by The ACM SIGPLAN] International Conference on Functional Programming.
- owlish 12y ago
  Ah, missed that in the wall of text. Thanks!

keenerd 12y ago

(Posted about the contest an hour earlier, only got two votes. Oh well.) If I am reading the problem correctly, there is no interactive component this year? You get one submission and don't get to test it against anything else. > It is not essential that the judges be able to run your code So is this a beauty pageant?

thedufer 12y ago
> We request (but do not strictly require) that you include in your .tar.gz/.zip various additional material That's the part they don't have to be able to run. They won't even try unless your entry is in the running, it seems. The .ghc and .gcc (the actual submission) does have to run, since that's what's being scored.
- keenerd 12y ago
  It makes a little more sense if you don't think about the game as an assembly of parts, which isn't really explained anywhere. For example there is some strategy with trying to make the ghosts be as bad as possible, so they are in a nice neat line immediately after a power pill. As usual, kudos to the team for making a puzzle with so many layers.

personZ 12y ago

So the strategy for the GCC (the Lambda-man controller) is that you actually build a compiler/pre-processor for it in some other tool, versus just logically solving the problem with the given instruction set? The details on the ghosts are dramatically clearer than the details on the Lambda man.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Fando 12y ago

The only thing I know about functional programming is that I know nothing about it.