kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) (05/09/91)
I can't believe all this <expletive> about the programming contest. How is football or basketball like real life. It's a CONTEST. Y'know, a GAME? An artifical (and in fact unnatural) set of constraints placed on the contestants for the purpose of making the contest lively and exciting? Watching (or participating in) a programming contest with no time limit would be as exciting as watching grass grow. The game is probably more a test of the knowledge of algorithms than one of coding skill anyway. It's hard enough to explain to the general public about how a bunch of computer geeks is going to get together and program for fun. Telling the public you'll announce the winner in six months after analyzing the style and beauty of the code seems anal retentive even for software folks. Don't you guys get enough seriousness in your daily lives without trying to kill what residual fun may be invented in this field. Geez. I bet you complain if the Obfuscated C code isn't prettyprinted. Kurt Guntheroth
barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) (05/10/91)
In article <1991May9.004140.1116@tc.fluke.COM> kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) writes: >I can't believe all this <expletive> about the programming contest. How is >football or basketball like real life. It's a CONTEST. Y'know, a GAME? An >artifical (and in fact unnatural) set of constraints placed on the >contestants for the purpose of making the contest lively and exciting? The Obfuscated C Code Contest is a game, run for fun. The ACM exists to further the computer industry, and I think many of us assume that the ACM programming contests are intended to be related to the education of future computer professionals. It's possible to design contests that are both fun and relevant. At MIT, there's a design class in the Mech.Eng. department that has a contest each term, where students are given a collection of random objects (strings, spools, a motor, etc.) and must build a device that will participate in a head-to-head competition against a classmate's device; the real-world relevance of this is to the design of devices with constraints on the raw materials. Many schools have "egg-dropping" contests, which are similar. In both cases, the particular problem is unnatural (no egg distributors seem to be replacing their cartons), but the skills they exercise are precisely those which are used in the real world. The programming contests, however, do not exercise many of the skills that are considered important to learn. In contrast, I think they test the talents that are somewhat inborn, and which caused us to gravitate towards the programming field, rather than that skills which must be learned in order to apply these talents best in the real world. There are many extremely prolific programmers out there who aren't able to work effectively as part of a team, whose code is virtually unreadable, or who are very sloppy about error handling, etc. There was a time when the hallmark of a great programmer was his ability to produce lots of programs or to squeeze every last millisecond off the program's runtime. I'd like to hope that we've progressed beyond this, but the programming contests still reward these same things. Of course, one problem the contest designers have, and which is shared by industry, is that objective criteria are necessary to reward the "best" programmers. While many of us have progressed beyond the above measures of good programming, we've had a hard time coming up with objective ways to measure the kinds of qualities that we do want out of programs and programmers. -- Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (05/11/91)
In article <1991May9.004140.1116@tc.fluke.COM> kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) writes: > I can't believe all this <expletive> about the programming contest. How is > football or basketball like real life. It's a CONTEST. Y'know, a GAME? And what's a game? A model of a system. The closer it gets to reality within the constraints on playability, the better. Look at any war game out there. Eastern Front, or Afrika Corps. These games are considered the tops because of the level of detail and the closeness to reality. > Geez. I bet you complain if the Obfuscated C code isn't prettyprinted. The OCCC is more like the sort of game you're thinking of. Programming contests are closer to the game-as-model idea. -- Peter da Silva; Ferranti International Controls Corporation; +1 713 274 5180; Sugar Land, TX 77487-5012; `-_-' "Have you hugged your wolf, today?"
mbarnett@cs.utexas.edu (Michael Barnett) (05/14/91)
In article <-F7BOR2@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <1991May9.004140.1116@tc.fluke.COM> kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) writes: >> I can't believe all this <expletive> about the programming contest. How is >> football or basketball like real life. It's a CONTEST. Y'know, a GAME? > >And what's a game? A model of a system. The closer it gets to reality within >the constraints on playability, the better. Look at any war game out there. >Eastern Front, or Afrika Corps. These games are considered the tops because >of the level of detail and the closeness to reality. > I have to admit that I read the above paragraph at least three times before I could believe what I was seeing. Would those games become even more popular if the players ran an actual risk of death or injury? I would appreciate some self-editorship else this newsgroup risks being swamped. I usually try not to respond, but this comment was just too much, especially with our "just war" so recently over. mike -- But then, that's one of the great things about living in America: moral superiority is so damned cheap. -- James Crumley "The Wrong Case"
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (05/15/91)
In article <1462@earth.cs.utexas.edu> mbarnett@cs.utexas.edu (Michael Barnett) writes: > In article <-F7BOR2@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > >In article <1991May9.004140.1116@tc.fluke.COM> kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) writes: > >> I can't believe all this <expletive> about the programming contest. How is > >> football or basketball like real life. It's a CONTEST. Y'know, a GAME? > >And what's a game? A model of a system. The closer it gets to reality within > >the constraints on playability, the better. Look at any war game out there. > >Eastern Front, or Afrika Corps. These games are considered the tops because > >of the level of detail and the closeness to reality. > I have to admit that I read the above paragraph at least three times > before I could believe what I was seeing. Would those games become even > more popular if the players ran an actual risk of death or injury? Perhaps you ought to read it again. These games model things at a divisional or higher level, but at that level they're unbelievably detailed. If you want to play war games at a 1-on-1 personal level, I'd recommend "The Survival Game" over "Sniper". > I would appreciate some self-editorship else this newsgroup risks being > swamped. I usually try not to respond, but this comment was just too much, > especially with our "just war" so recently over. If only people would be willing to settle differences at a game board rather than a battlefield I, for one, would be much happier. I doubt we have that different an opinion of the whole bloody business. That doesn't change the popularity of the more accurate simulations. If war games bother you, then consider Microsoft Flight Simulator. -- Peter da Silva; Ferranti International Controls Corporation; +1 713 274 5180; Sugar Land, TX 77487-5012; `-_-' "Have you hugged your wolf, today?" >U<