I propose we hold a programming contest in which I will gift the winner a 30$ game of their choice (if there are other people willing to pay, we could have additional 2nd and 3rd place prizes even).
It doesn't have to be in c++, but we will need judges. If you guys are interested in this, I think it would be a great way to motivate people to have fun and learn new things, if it really takes off, I'd be interested in doing more than once a year as well.
@drew887 I think that this is very generous of you and I would like to enter depending on the rules and everything.
Few suggestions though:
Do a score out of 30. This would be the overall score.
Have an entry cap.
Have three subcategories:
Creativeness
Ease of use
Code simplicity
Don't allow code comments if you use code simplicity though.
Saying that this is a c++ forum keep it in c++.
If submitting these suggestions makes me unable to enter I would love to help. I am a coding newb so I probably couldn't be a judge. I will consider offering a prize if I can't participate. I may not give a prize though.
I (think I) see where LB is taking this one: Algorithmic type contests
We could design our problems and have a central server (twikker *cough* *cough*) running the evaluator that tests solutions.
Didn't we try something like this before?
Did it die?
Just a suggestion because if you are going for code simplisticness (I know that isn't a word) you can write the hardest ever to understand code but a 300 line comment that makes it look like 2 + 2.
EDIT: My point is that if you want the code to be simple the comments will tip the easiness to understand scale. I also don't think a newb should be a judge.
Well written code only needs high level explanations of what is happening, and maybe what each variable is doing. (Probably applies 80-90% of the time).
Lumpkin wrote:
the thread is like on the 2nd page of the lounge that no one ever looks at.
*sarcasm* revive the thread young necroposter *sarcasm*
I think the prize should be like the code to a egiftcard to like best buy, gamestop, steam, gog, ios, android or something. Also, if the place doesn't have egiftcards, someone should go out, buy the giftcard and give out the pin and id to the winner.
Toad I don't think submitting suggestions should prevent you from participating :p. But an entry cap does sound nice, just so the judges don't go insane looking at hundreds of entries.
With the topic of prize, I don't really care whether its me gifting a game or sending the money via paypal or something, I'll just leave that up to the winner of the contest.
As to the keeping it c++, I kinda want people to learn and have fun from this contest, so keeping it open to all languages is a good way to help that happen; although if you use something like brainfuck, the judges might give you a bad score as it's not very readable :p.
Also as to how it will be marked, I think we should leave that up to the judges, considering they will be the ones marking the entries in the first place.
And LB the idea of competition server software sounds like a pretty good idea, but again, that might be a decision for the judges :0.
All in all, I just hope people can have fun with this contest.
You submit the program, it compiles and executes it with the judge's input data and compares the output to the judge's output data. If it isn't a close match or it crashes or it doesn't compile, you get an error back.
I did, it looks pretty cool, it also looks like you can have living judges as well. That way we can grade on source code as well rather than just who's the first one to complete the task sort of thing.