Programming Reality

Every year the International Conference of Functional Programming hosts a contest that is open to everybody. There is no admission fee and the winner gets cash, an invitation to the conference and (most importantly) bragging rights.

This category on my blog is devoted to BoundVariable, the tasks for the 2006 ICFP Contest devised by the CMU. Everybody who took part will remember the immense fun we had with the assignments.

Note the plural - normally the contest consists of a single task. Not then. Actually, after you decode the initial mysterious code blob, you face many different tasks of varying difficulty.

To make it even more interesting, every group got their own ID - the decoded code blob would make sure that once you finished a task, you got a 32bit-flag you could upload to the website. It would show the scores of the different teams accordingly.

You can no longer sign up, of course, but there is a general ID you can use. You will find documentation, the initial code blob (which is a bytecode compiled program) and the specification for the VM together with some other tools on the website http://www.boundvariable.org/.

A couple of weeks back I told a friend of mine about BoundVariable - and we engaged in some kind of competition about it. After all, the contest is over - but that means that we can take our time.
We’re in no rush. Do the same with a pal! It’s really fun.

Oh, and do post your solutions or comments about mine! It will be appreciated!

WARNING! The following posts will show you my approaches and solutions to the different problems. If you read on, there WILL be spoilers! Don’t deprive yourself of all the fun and try to solve the differents parts on your own first.