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ICFP Programming Contest

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As far as elite programming contests go, I thought the only one around was the ACM-ICP. (The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.) However there is a less well known but arguably more hard core contest called the ICFP.

Each year as part of The International Conference on Functional Programming there is a programming contest in which the first prize is an official declaration that:

“The first place team's language is the programming language of choice for discriminating hackers”

Of course we all know the language of choice for discriminating hackers is F#, but if that could be proven by winning this completion then great! So Brian McNamara, Luke Hoban, Dustin Campbell, and Myself formed team Cup<’t>.

You can get the full ICFP 2008 problem description here, but generally it was write an AI for a Mars rover which avoids obstacles and blood thirsty Martians. I’ve never written a ‘real time’ app before and found the whole robotics domain pretty enjoyable. (Maybe you’ll start seeing blog posts using Robotics Developer Studio.)

Anyways, if you missed out on the competition I definitely encourage you to participate next year. We had a total blast.

Team Cup<'t> 

Pictured from left: Brian McNamara, Luke Hoban, Anson Horton, Alex Turner

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 15, 2008
    Looks like the guy on the left brought a desktop computer with full-size monitor and keyboard to the conference room.  How clever - that must have been way better than spending 72 hours hunched over under-powered laptops staring at tiny screens.  The guy on the left must one smart cookie!  :)

  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2008
    Did you guys post your solution anywhere?

  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2008
    We did not, though I'll probabaly post our solution to this blog after we ship CTP. (Otherwise you couldn't open the project file and/or compile the code.)