Soon ICFPC 2015

We were 7 people. We had 20 modules on a haskel, a private repository on a githaba, 6 branches in this repository, ImplicitParams, MagicHash and UndecidableInstances in the code and one highmem node on Amazon, as well as hangouts for communication, unit tests, simple tests, google docs for notes and a bunch of articles about SMT-solvers. Not that we all use it, but on the ICFPC you are looking for any foolishness in the internet and it can be difficult to stop. The only thing that worried me was the SMT-solvers. There is nothing more helpless, irresponsible and spoiled than a person reading articles during a contest. But I knew that sooner or later we would sit down on this stuff.
( Dmitry Astapov )

Dedicated to habrovchanam, who sometimes want to take a break from industrial coding and find something so insanely [cool] for the soul. The annual ICFP Contest will start in less than a week!

What is it

There is such an International Conference on Functional Programming , which takes place once a year in different parts of the world. A three-day team contest hackaphone is timed to it, the winners of which, in addition to respecting and cash prizes, receive free tickets. And here begins the most interesting.
Despite the name and theme of the conference, the tasks are not sharpened for any languages ​​and technologies, and you can write on absolutely anything; and in prize places , for example, C ++ stably appears. As a rule, they do not have a reference solution, and they can be approached with complete creative freedom. The deadline is three days (Friday to Monday depending on the time zone of the participants), during which you can send any intermediate results and get points for it, and there is also lightning division with a separate table of winners for the first day. That is, democracy is complete - you can work anywhere, whatever you like, with any composition without registration and SMS . And finally, the main feature - the tasks in the contest are entrancingly creative and very elaborate, and full of subtle humor, easter eggs and references. From the most prominent examples:

• decode a two-megabyte virtual machine, in which upihna ton of puzzles like Unix-console, math puzzles and text quest (2006);
• help an alien to adapt to our planet by gutting and complementing its self-modifying DNA, which is able to draw uporotnye pictures (2007);
• learn to play and win with other participants in the Magic: the Gathering hybrid and lambda calculus (2011);
• write bots for alternative pacman spinning on an arcade machine from a lisp machine and an eight-bit microcontroller (2014).

A great way to join and be inspired is to look at the reports of the aforementioned Dmitry Astapov , which can be read as a technotriller. I recommend starting in 2006 , which has not yet surpassed any competition.
Participation requires team development skills and the ability to at least partially fall out of life over the weekend. Very desirable outlook in the field of computer science. Experts and craftsmen of AI, virtual machines and compilers are particularly welcome, these topics skip almost every year. Although, of course, the most important thing is a common understanding.

Announcement

Now a little about what will happen this year.
The conference is held from August 31 to September 2 in Vancouver, and the contest very soon - from August 7 to 10. Judging by the traditionally laconic announcement , we are waiting for something on a cryptographic theme with allusions to the national security and creativity of Lovecraft. The available bits of information were analyzed by a regular member of the ICFPC Turtle // Bazon.
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See you in the standings!