The Programming Contests Just Keep Coming...

Registration is underway for the 9th annual ICFP Programming Contest.

Hosted by Carnegie Mellon University's Principles of Programming (POP) Group, the contest is associated with the upcoming International Conference on Functional Programming, a forum for programmers to learn about recent work on the design, implementations, principles, and uses of functional programming.

Functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. Functional programming languages, which have their roots in Lisp and APL, includes the likes of Erlang, Haskell, Dylan, and Mondrian , to name a few. The functional paradigm can also be implemented in more mainstream languages, such as Java.

The contest will run from July 21-24, 2006, with the contest challenge announced at 12:00 (noon) EDT on July 21, and entries acccempted until 12:00 (noon) EDT on July 24. A few days prior to the start of the contest, contest organizers will make some required materials available on the contest web site. (The International Conference on Functional Programming Conference itself takes place September 18-20, 2006.)

There is no entry fee or need to pre-register and everyone, except for CMU faculty, students, and staff, is eligible. Teams may work from any location. For ICFP 2006, there are two divisions: small teams and large teams. A small team consists of 0–4 persons. A large team may have any number of members. Teams may switch from the small team division to the large team division at any time (even once the contest has begun) if they wish to take on new members. Large teams are not eligible for the first prize, but otherwise the two divisions are identical. Teams may work in any programming language(s) that they wish, and use any computational resources at their disposal.

Now for the good stuff: There will be four prizes: First, second, and third place, as well as a discretionary judges' prize. Prize money totaling $1750 will be awarded to help defray the costs of travel to the contest for the winners and for small cash prizes.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:59 AM  Permalink