IOCCC 2006 is now open

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!"

On the other hand ...

[Salvance]

They could always create an International Obfuscated AJAX competition, then every entrant could be a winner.

Either I'm dumber than I had hoped, have worked with nimwitted programmers, or (much more likely) most AJAX implementations are just completely illogic to follow. When reviewing "Web 2.0" work, I often miss the logic and structure of C.

Re:It'll get better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Common Lisp or Scheme code is often only unreadable to people who have had their brains scrambled by languages like C, C++, Java, C# and VB. I was involved with a college class that taught Scheme to first-year business students. These students, many of whom had never written a program in their lives, picked up Scheme very quickly. I had helped with a similar Scheme course for third-year Comp. Sci. students, and a greater percentage of them had trouble adjusting to Scheme.

After talking with some of the business students, they suggested that it was the syntax that made it so easy! The extreme consistency of s-expressions basically eliminates confusion. There's no question as to how to write a piece of code, as the steps to take are so very clear, and the code to write is basically self-evident.

Some students did have trouble. But after talking with them, we found that it was usually because they had had some previous experience using languages like Perl, C or some sort of Basic. Such languages are consistently inconsistent, especially Perl, when it comes to syntax. So when somebody finally learns such languages, they actually find it far more difficult to go to a very consistent language, as all they are used to is inconsistency.

Re:On the other hand ...

[misleb]

AJAX is complicated by the fact that you are executing code in two places... the server and the client. And code is often mixed with HTML. How obfuscated it is (or seems) really depends on the framework you are using. If you're putting together an app/site with PHP and writing your own AJAX calls, it can get pretty hairy. But when using something like Ruby on Rails, it is pretty straight forward.

-matthew

Re:Isn't it time for a CLEAR code contest?

[nacturation]

Yeesh... sounds too much like work. I get paid to write clear code. When I don't get paid, I want to have fun with it.
 

Re:It'll get better.

[morgan_greywolf]

Common Lisp or Scheme code is often only unreadable to people who have had their brains scrambled by languages like C, C++, Java, C# and VB.

C or C++ code is often only unreadable to people who have had their brains scrambled by languages like Common Lisp and Scheme.

So? The fact that some management types think scheme proves exactly what?