GEEKS: Forwarded: : Perl .Too Good. for UCLA.s CSUA programming competition...

[lvirden@cas.org (Larry W. Virden)]

I think this is worthy of the geeks mailing list...


Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 15:56:36 -0800
>From: rdm@cfcl.com (Rich Morin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.misc
Subject: Perl "Too Good" for UCLA's CSUA programming competition...

>>>From http://www.perl.org/advocacy/chiem.html

Perl "Too Good"

This is a true story. Names have not been changed.

  UCLA's Computer Science Undergraduate Association regularly hosts its
  programming competition.  Contestants are given six complex problems and
  have three hours to write programs to solve as many of the problems as
  possible.  In 1997, the rules stated that any programming language could
  be used so long as you solved the problem, so then-undergraduate Keith
  Chiem entered and used Perl.

  Keith did not merely win, he conquered. He solved five of the six problems
  in the three hours allotted. The second-place two-person team solved only
  three problems.   They, needless to say, were not using Perl.

  But if you're a UCLA undergraduate contemplating entering the contest and
  using Perl, don't bother.  After Keith's conquest, Perl was banned from
  the contest.

  You've got to admire a language that is banned because it makes problems
  too easy to solve.

These days, Keith is a sysadmin at Yahoo! Inc., and is wondering what to do
with the copy of Visual C++ that was his prize.

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Larry W. Virden                 INET: lvirden@cas.org
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