And the Winner Is (Once Again)...

Keeping track of programming contests has become a full-time job.

Why, in the past few weeks alone I've reported on the ACM Collegiate Programming Contest, Game Court 2006, DARPA's Urban Challenge, the 57th Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the Goldegg Packaging Sprint, and the Computing Olympiad, among others.

Then there's all of the contests that I haven't mentioned: the University of Waterloo Programming Contests, the Google India Code Jam, the Annual Berkeley Programming Contest, and so on--not to mention a whole slew of contests on everything from multithreading to algorithms hosted by Topcoder. And of course, there is the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. I mentioned this one, and a bunch of others (including the Dr. Dobb's "Handwriting Recognition Contest") in my original "And the Winner Is...".

Criminy! There are even books on programming contests--Steven Skiena and Miguel Revilla's Programming Challenges: The Programming Contest Training Manual and The First 10 Prolog Programming Contests, by Bart Demoen, Phuong-Lan Nguyen, Tom Schrijvers, and Remko Troncon, come to mind.

Why, if a person had a mind to, they could make a career out of entering contests. Professional sweepstakers exist elsewhere--why not in programming?

With that in mind, the most recent programming contest I've run across is the Windows CE Shared Source Contest sponsored by Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices Group. All you have to do is come up with a real-world project that combines Windows CE along with either or both of two Shared Source components--the Windows CE WebCam driver and/or the Windows CE DVR engine. The Grand Prize is a Xbox 360 setup consisting of the Xbox 360 console, 34-inch HDTV, games, and accessories. Three other winners will be awarded Xbox 360 game consoles.

Good luck, clean coding, and let me know if you win.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:49 AM  Permalink