RedEye Competition (Third-Level Students)

kdouglas

http://www.itcarlow.ie/redeye/

24-hour programming competition for all 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students, anyone thinking of going? was thinking about it myself but:

Personal stereos and pagers are strictly not allowed

dont think i could program for 24hours straight without my music!!

Syth

Hadn't heard of this before, it looks interesting, but I don't really like the compilers available. Give me GCC, G++, perl, PHP (maybe Java) and I'd be happy.

It's got J++ FFS!

Farls

It sounds good craic just pitty about the compilers, where the ****s eclipse?!?!?!

i'd strongly consider going only for that.

Farlz

WizZard

Bah, not a student anymore!!!

dazberry

The RedEye programming contest is sponsored by Dell, o2, Microsoft and Specsavers

Wait till you have to do it in real-life(tm) and somehow its loses its appeal...

Aside

• Borland Pascal Version 7.0
• Borland C++ Version 4.0
• JBuilder Version 6.0
• Borland Delphi
• Microsoft Visual C++
• Microsoft Visual Basic 6
• Microsoft Visual J++

With MS on board I'm surprised that a) there are so many Borland (incl BP7!!!) tools and b) everything else doesn't stink of notYET (sorry dotNET).

D.

kdouglas

id agree about the crap compilers available, but if you think about it, it makes sense, these are probably the most common compilers found on college computers, i guess they dont want to confuse people by using different compilers, but this itself makes no sense because anyone experienced enough for this competition would probably be familiar with several compilers and have a strong distaste for microsoft by now.

just out of interest, of the languages available, what would be everyones preference? personally im most experienced in c and c++ so that would be my language of choice.

Syth

They are probably just using those compilers because of 'industry standard', ie it's what everyone uses. However the page says the contests are 'of algorithmic in nature', which implies it's more 'how good a coder are you' as opposed to "how well can you use the new tool from $big_commercial_IT_company".

I wonder could you bring in code? Most compiler or interpretors for other languages are written in C/C++...

I would probably like to use Perl. (Or maybe PHP, which I'm learning now). Perl is good for algorithmic stuff.

damnyanks

If anyone is interested there is also the Imagine cup which is run by Microsoft. You'd be using the .Net framework so that may be a problem for some people. They have lots of disciplines dont think many from Ireland enter it either. Easy trip to Japan in that case

scojones

I'm going. The compilers are rubbish, but eh it'll be ok. No music, i'll go fsssking nuts

OfflerCrocGod

I did it last year ( won the team competition ) and before starting you get half an hour to download whatever you want ( I got eclipse and the Java SDK documentation ) I used Java and frankly they never looked at the code so you can use whatever you want. The team competition is easier then the individual....the individual problems are LOGIC not normal code problems.....I looked at last years questions and I couldn't even begin one it's Math/Logic stuff not real world coding questions. The team one is just a little game ( Snooker or 3-D checkers - OpenGL ) we used Java so we went for Swing. The first placed team wins an XBox each the rest of the teams win nothing, first place individual gets the PC ( a not very good Dell one ) second gets the Gmini and third a mobile.....Good luck if you want to enter but it's honestly not worth it, I don't see myself trying it again. The individual one last year was won by some guy who was working as a programmer for 10 years before going back to education.

kdouglas

i would go for the team one myself, but dont know much on graphics so i wouldnt see the point in doing it, and if i got a team of people with good graphics programming abilities i'd just slow them down.

im still thinking about it for now, might wait until next year. (im in year 2 of 4)

Thorbar

Is there any restrictions on how you do your graphics programing ie swing/opengl/directX?

OfflerCrocGod

Thorbar wrote:

Is there any restrictions on how you do your graphics programing ie swing/opengl/directX?

Not really, they had two team questions one required OpenGL the other was left to the team to choose, we choose swing.

leahcim

I dont agree with you guys when you say that the compilers are rubbish.

Borlands C++ and MS C++ are excellent implementations of C++ which are ANSI compliant. You may not like the their graphical develoment environments or the GUI libraries they use but that has nothing to do with the compiler. You could write your code in notepad if you want.

Borland JBuilder uses SUNs JDK surely that is a good enough java compiler for ya.

Borland Pascal and delphi are both ANSI compliant Pascal compilers.

Dont knock a compiler because you dont like its code editor or the company that makes it.

I think it would be no harm if they has some other languages such as PERL or PROLOG (especially if some of the individual questions are logic based)

I wish we had something like this when I was in college.

Leahcim.

Tobias Greeshman

I done this redeye competition last year, as I was in 4th year down in Carlow, however I cant do it anymore as Ive graduated from college.

You can listen to music, you just need to store it on the internet or some server so you can download it. There was four of us, we just downloaded a s**t load of mp3s and listened to them through the programming. They give you lunch and breakfast too, and theres vending machines and stuff.

Though when it reaches 8am you really start to feel the tiredness coming on!

smorton

I did it last year and me and a few ppl i met there ordered pizza in the middle of the night, Forget about vending machines
the problems are very hard. only got 3 of 6 out :eek:

HaVoC

Last years Code
If any body wants it