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Programming IT Technology

Whither the 19th IOCCC? 124

Posted by kdawson from the now-that's-obfuscated dept.
dazedNconfuzed writes "Whatever happened to the 19th IOCCC? The opening thereof was announced over two years ago and the winners' names were posted, but the source code was never released — leaving the results of the 2006 contest unknown as we get well into 2009. Emails to questions@ioccc.org just bounce. Surely the quiet absence of a high point of geekdom becomes news at some point!"
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Whither the 19th IOCCC? More

Whither the 19th IOCCC?

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  • they are still... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @01:22AM (#26979155)

    figuring out the entries

  • You have their names, shouldn't be too difficult.

  • It's just an extra layer of obfuscation (Score:4, Funny)

    by forkazoo ( 138186 ) <wrosecrans AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @01:29AM (#26979195) Homepage

    The code was so obfuscated, the people running the competition were actually driven completely mad and committed suicide. Now you need to be *extra* clever to have them receive your submission, and you have to be willing to kill yourself to see the results.

    • Well, thats part of the story. The high level of obfuscation in the code actually prolonged the lives of those poor bastards, as when they did they beheld that all of the entries, when considered together and simplified to their pure essence, spelled out the true name of Shub-Niggurath, and the portal to the third realm of sub-Earth that opened when this name was spoken aloud showed them sights that drove them to the edge that exists between madness and the very heart of Hell itself.

      Be glad they haven't ann

  • Or Underhanded C contest? (Score:5, Informative)

    by cras ( 91254 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @01:36AM (#26979227) Homepage

    http://underhanded.xcott.com/ [xcott.com] doesn't mention anything about last year's winners and the contest ended almost 5 months ago.. The one time I bother sending a submission to these kind of contests and the contest appears to die :(

    • We will remember this and be watching you! Are you really the grim reaper of C Code in disguise?!?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Xcott Craver ( 615642 )
      I am the organizer of the UCC, and I apologize for the delay. We are normally pretty relaxed with our schedule, being academics; but this year I think more so, because the student who assists me with UCC is currently in deep hack mode on his own research project. I assure you, however, that we will have the results up within a month, or else we will lap the next contest!

  • There, I've saved you a Google search... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @01:43AM (#26979259)
    That's the The International Obfuscated C Code Contest.

  • Half-assed (Score:1, Troll)

    by PyroMosh ( 287149 )

    I had never heard of this. But a quick googling reveals lots of similar problems with past contests, such as not being able to organize in time to have contestants some years, etc.

    Sounds like it's a half-assed operation that's just not very well organized. Like 99% of Source Forge projects. People sign on, lose interest, and disappear. That's the nature of open source sometimes, you have to wade through lots of shit to get to the gems. (though I'd say the gems tend to make things worth it).

    Hardly what

  • Just taking part is a large enough honor!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SL Baur ( 19540 )

      Just taking part is a large enough honor!

      True, true and entertaining. I took part in one of the earliest IOCCCs. None of my 3 entries won anything, but at least I have bragging rights that I tried.

      1) A program that consisted of mostly all 0/O,1/l characters that converted binary to decimal/decimal to binary depending upon what name it was invoked with.

      2) A one liner that printed "Hello World!\n" with each character generated from a subprocess based on an obfuscated state table. That was apparently more obfuscated to the Pyramid kernel than to t

  • slashdot front page- the new facebook? (Score:4, Funny)

    by drDugan ( 219551 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @01:47AM (#26979287) Homepage

    oh dear

    connection request: "kdawson would like to find you"

  • Weird... this one too.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nmoog ( 701216 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @01:50AM (#26979305) Homepage Journal
    I've also noticed that this fortune city personal hom page [fortunecity.com] from 1999 is still under construction... Any one know when it might be done?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jrwr00 ( 1035020 )

      Haha he has a link for The Zone... God that was a long time ago, anyone remember the game that they had on there called "Ants"

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by uofitorn ( 804157 )
      At the time of my posting the parent was modded +3 Informative. Clearly, there is not an ounce of humor left in any of the mod's rickety calcium deprived bones.

      • Re:Weird... this one too.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Splab ( 574204 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @02:43AM (#26979515)

        Informative is quite a good modding in my opinion, had totally forgot about fortune city et. al.

        That brings back some memories.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by neomunk ( 913773 )

        This is something I've had to tell many people many times, but I guess I'll continue doing it until it's common knowledge or the policy changes...

        Slashdot's Karmic system doesn't give any lasting Karma (beyond that posts score) for Funny moderations, so many times if people see something that's funny enough to earn Karma, and it's posted by someone who's logged in, they'll give it an Informative or Insightful. Try to keep that in mind if you meta-mod.

        I really think the policy of not giving Karma for Funny

        • I'm an arrogant asshole with great karma on slashdot. The 'karma hole' you speak of isn't really an issue, because if it was, mine wouldn't be 'excellent'.

          People who's karma rating is going to be noticeably effected by 'Funny' posts which have some negative mods to them really didn't have that high of karma to begin with so you really aren't doing that much damage.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by neomunk ( 913773 )

            I only started talking about this after I noticed a few reasonable and well-written posts modded at -1 Funny. It took me a minute to figure it out, but once I remembered that Funny doesn't give Karma, it seemed downright dirty.

            AFAIK, there is a cap to your Karma that cannot be crossed, so anyone, regardless of posting history, is vulnerable to the right troll (or trolls) beating them down to Bad Karma.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by iYk6 ( 1425255 )

      That guy was 52 when he made that page. In Internet years, he is about 1000 by now, and has probably expired.

      • He should have made himself into a meme, then he will live on forever.

        • He should have made himself into a meme, then he will live on forever.

          It is our solemn duty to do it for him. How about:
          bobnefication [n.]: (of a web site) the act of being eternally under construction
          or
          Fly, bobne, fly! [interj.]: Doubtful reply to an announcement.
          or simply
          Welcome to my new Hompage which is still under construction.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tnk1 ( 899206 )

          He did. After giving up on his crappy hom[e]page, he discovered Linux, created his own webserver, became a technical genius, singlehandedly achieved the technological Singularity, and is now that orange box meme currently going around 4chan.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fava ( 513118 )

      Did you notice the guestbook? There are a few entries from 1999/2000 but the bulk of them are from today. He probably has more traffic today than the last 10 years combined.

  • Maybe it's just my tinfoil hat speaking... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Count Fenring ( 669457 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @01:50AM (#26979307) Homepage Journal

    One of the entries involved processing through Nth-dimensional mathematic constructs. When the judges ran it, a quantum differential between our spacetime and that of certain elder influences was generated. A portal, luckily one-way, to the den of a million screaming chains was opened, and it swallowed all of the judges, who will be consumed for ten cycles of our universe expanding and contracting, and then spit out as the final weapon in the Old Ones' war on our reality.

    Or I've been reading too much Charles Stross

  • winning entries (Score:5, Informative)

    by sdsykes_ss ( 1486333 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @02:16AM (#26979401)

    I don't have links to all the entries, but here is best of show: http://nanochess.110mb.com/emulator.html [110mb.com]

    And here are my two winning entries: http://www.stephensykes.com/blog_perm.html?148 [stephensykes.com]

    Enjoy!

  • News (Score:3, Funny)

    by jeroen94704 ( 542819 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @02:38AM (#26979493)
    Funny thing is, their latest news item (not carried by all mirrors) is from April 4, 2008, and reads:

    Added a two IOCCC web site mirrors [...] to support the upcomming source code release of winning entries for 2006.

    Surely, announcing the upcoming source code release a year and a half after the competition closes, and then NOT doing it is, in an obfuscated way, sweetly ironic.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )
      It's not like they plan on beating the Oscars in number of viewers when they release the source code. They can survive two hours of slashdotting without need for plenty of mirrors.

  • The Real News (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Idiomatick ( 976696 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @03:16AM (#26979639)
    The real news is that a site so poorly run that they cannot release the winners code after years ... Did NOT get slashdotted. How is this even remotely possible.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      The real news is that a site so poorly run that they cannot release the winners code after years ... Did NOT get slashdotted. How is this even remotely possible.

      Obviously, this is because it's slashdot and we don't even try to RTFA any more. We're all so fucking smart we can just talk about it without doing any research.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by makomk ( 752139 )
      Because they're used to the odd slashdotting, so the site's spread across several mirrors to handle the load. It can cope with a horde of /.ers downloading the source tarballs - a few static pages is nothing.

    • Simplicity!

      Afaict most sites get slashdotted for one of three reasons

      1: Large downloads/images/videos
      2: Dynamic content that can't handle large numbers of identical requests efficianly.
      3: hosted on a home server or a REALLY shitty hosting plan

      If none of theese issues apply to your site the afaict you will probablly survive.

  • it was bound to happen (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @03:53AM (#26979801)

    AFAIK, after seeing all that messed-up code, they started using Python in 2006 and never looked back.

    • Re:it was bound to happen (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @04:29AM (#26979931)

      I am a IOCCC winner, and I can tell you this: winning the IOCCC landed me a job.

      You know why? Because someone who can spew out a short, interesting, and obfuscated C program and still comply with the IOCCC rules, which includes cross-platform compatibility and compliance with the K&R, demonstrates 3 things:

      - He knows C very well indeed,
      - He thinks outside the box, but within established rules,
      - He's willing to work long hours just to optimize and polish a small piece of code.

      This is valid for languages other than C; there's a reason why job interviews in the field of programming often include coding something, or solving a tricky piece of code. I know for a fact that many a prospective employer treats (or at least used to treat) the IOCCC as an excellent test of C proficiency.

      I

      • Code or it didn't happen!

        • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          #include
          main(){AD*(S_D)IK,A:DHJA(UD)HJL;)forKNXH(*DJA{PCN:H*APHXA({JXAOXN}[AX&A*YBC]UIAG&*ASAMbbH[OA]BS$uiAGSAjijionx &A^G&SH::NK:B,A&*XHGS^&W*WGB,HG)}

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by SL Baur ( 19540 )

        - He's willing to work long hours just to optimize and polish a small piece of code.

        This is valid for languages other than C; there's a reason why job interviews in the field of programming often include coding something, or solving a tricky piece of code. I know for a fact that many a prospective employer treats (or at least used to treat) the IOCCC as an excellent test of C proficiency.

        Interesting point, though time for code polishing is rarely granted IRL.

        Of course, if I were interviewing you, and you gave me a winning IOCCC entry as a code sample I'd do my utmost to have you hired on the spot based on general principles.

        Do you have a link to your winning entry?

        • Do you have a link to your winning entry?

          I would link it but I'd rather not disclose my full name and address on /. :)

          • We know exactly where you live: Hazzard County, GA. To further elaborate, you drive a Plymouth Fury at work, wear a gun, have a hound named Flash, and your middle name is Purvis.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by SL Baur ( 19540 )

            My email address as shown is valid, so email it privately, if you wish. Never mind if that's too much invasion of privacy.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by A Big Gnu Thrush ( 12795 )

        We need an Obfuscated Flash contest. Like a Flash game that no one can figure out how to play or a Flash ad that you can't turn off or close. Something a little more 21st Century.

      • K&R is not defined well enough (and too buggy in the parts where it is actually defined) to justify a meaningfull application of the term "compliance" to it. "Compliance with K&R" is an oxymoron. Meaningful compliance begins from C89/90, but alas IOCCC does not require that. In fact, according to the official rules, IOCCC is not really IO[C]CC, but rather IO[GCC]CC. Not surprisingly, most IOCCC entries actually demonstrate a rather poor knowledge of C.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by makomk ( 752139 )
          Actually, the official rules require entries to be written in ANSI C, which I think means C89/90. (The older IOCCC contests were probably K&R-based, though.)

  • Ended up in the codebase here at work (Score:4, Funny)

    by syousef ( 465911 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @04:35AM (#26979957) Journal

    I don't know anything about the judging but I think I recognise all of the entries in the codebase at work.

  • oblig bash (Score:3, Funny)

    by mevets ( 322601 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @04:49AM (#26980021)

    Maybe MS sued them for copyright infringement...

  • All the likely winners... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Joey Vegetables ( 686525 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @09:24AM (#26981365) Journal
    are working on Perl 6.

  • Perhaps the winning entry is so obfuscated that they haven't been able to find it.

  • My favorite is this one:

    http://www.ioccc.org/1996/eldby.c [ioccc.org]

    But modern terminals are too fast for it :)

  • Maybe they're out playing Perl Golf.

  • ...and the judges couldn't shut it down, and so had to create a temporal bubble around the lab to contain it. They're still trapped inside.

  • C++0x (Score:4, Funny)

    by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @04:56PM (#26987839) Journal

    A first C++0x draft had appeared. IOCCC judges have looked at that, and realized that the whole exercise is now futile - since every C++ programmer can rapidly crank out unreadable code in RAD mode. Case in point: we all know that the following can be legal C++ (and C):

    --a***b++;

    However, C++0x brings its to new heights; for example, the following is a perfectly legal C++0x statement:

    [](){}();

  • making it a #!@#$ to update
  • The IOCCC judges can be contacted by following these instructions [ioccc.org]. If you want to contribute your expertise or time to the IOCCC then please contact us.
  • The winning entry was so well obfuscated that when the judges laid it aside, chameleon like, it blended right into the surface on which it had been placed. And they've been looking for it ever since.

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