IOCCC 2006 is now open 76
leob writes "The 19th International Obfuscated C Code Contest opened one minute before the New Year to qualify for the 2006 designation. Entries accepted until the end of February. Start writing and submitting your entries now!"
every year, this must get re-explained (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, the 2006 "Explanation of Why IOCCC Is Not Just Ugly Code" is now underway.
The winning entries are pieces of art, not pieces of dung. They look like they should do one thing, but they do another. They arrange the code in a visually pleasing but maintenance-proof way. They choose some concept and take it to the absurd limit, all within a tiny amount of code.
My favorite past entry is John Tromp's maze generator [homepages.cwi.nl]. In seven lines of code, he produces random mazes. The variables are named M, A, Z, E instead of useful functional mnemonics. The source code is formatted to LOOK like a maze. And even in this maze which is the source code, the passages in the maze spell out the word 'maze.' This is not just putting a pig on the lipstick, this is making the pig look *good*.