Subject:
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Re: NQC Programmers do it on one line
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Thu, 24 Nov 2005 16:06:27 GMT
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Viewed:
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1306 times
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> > > Hey, thanks for this.
The IOCCC (International Obfuscated C Code Competition) isn't about
writing things in as few lines as possible (although there is a pretty
tight limit on the maximum size of entries).
> > > I did realise this although I think there are contests for writing short C progs???
The objective of the contest is to write the most difficult to read
and/or understand program possible. The limit on the size of the
entries is mostly for the sake of the sanity of the judges who have
to at least make an effort to understand the code in order to form
an opinion about which is the most 'obfuscated'.
The entries use all the most horrible and obscure features of C yet do
something interesting. Many times, the result is extremely clever - and
even actually useful! In a few cases nobody other than the author has
ever managed to figure out how they do what they do.
Quite often, looking at the source code produces a pretty picture of
something. For example, there was a flight simulator program submitted
a few years ago - if you printed out the source code, it was in the
shape of an aeroplane.
> I'm guessing that the shortest will be 5 lines or less. I think you could
> probably do a light follower 1?
Counting lines isn't a good goal because any program can be made into a
1-liner by just joining all the lines together. You need to ask how
many characters there are in the source code.
eg I'm pretty sure you could write a line-follower in under 80
characters - but how about under 40?
> > > I meant line as in the bit before the ';'
But the IOCCC is a very unique contest - I'm not sure people should
try to emulate a contest that celebrates really *bad* programming style!
> > > They give quite a reasonable justification for the contest. Could it be especially relevant for programming the RCX with its memory limitations?
Thomas
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: NQC Programmers do it on one line
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| (...) And obfuscated code is not limited to C - the Perl community has a culture of enjoying obfuscated code, see: (URL) 1-liners, when I had my Apple ][+ in the early 80s, there was a magazine called "Nibble" which ran 1 and 2 liner contests using (...) (19 years ago, 24-Nov-05, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: NQC Programmers do it on one line
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| (...) writing things in as few lines as possible (although there is a pretty tight limit on the maximum size of entries). The objective of the contest is to write the most difficult to read and/or understand program possible. The limit on the size (...) (19 years ago, 24-Nov-05, to lugnet.robotics)
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