ANNOUNCE: 0th International Obfuscated Haskell Code Contest

[shae@webwitches.com]

In the spirit of http://ioccc.org/ ....

Bring us your poor, weary, downtrodden, and unreadable source code.

Come to the 0th INTERNATIONAL OBFUSCATED HASKELL CODE CONTEST!

This contest is meant to be fun, short, and not terribly serious. Also, then
we'll know if a 1st IOHCC is a good idea.

    * submission deadline: March 1st, 2003
    * send your code (and/or complaints/comments) to: 
      mailto:iohc-jury@mgoetze.net
    * winners and possible rules updates at http://iohc.mgoetze.net/

Submission must have source and some sort of description file so that the
jurors won't be totally mystified.

Rules:

    * LICENSE: your code must an original work, all submitted programs are 
      thereby put in the public domain. All explicitly copyrighted programs
      will be rejected. (see the IOCCC rules)
    * max source size: 5k
    * entry must include shell script or makefile to perform the build
    * build must not require human intervention
    * doing something interesting and/or useful is a plus
    * we particularly like games
    * limited abuse of the rules is acceptable if the specific abuses are 
      documented, and the judges think it's cool

Portability:

    * latest public release versions of hugs, ghc, nhc, hbc, helium acceptable 
      (any we missed?)
    * may use common Haskell tools such as hmake, happy etc.
    * program need not be portable across Haskell implementations
    * must be relatively portable across platforms (i.e. no Linux-specificisms)
    * use of ANSI/VTxxx codes which are not limited to a specific brand of 
      terminal and work in a standard xterm are portable
    * FFI is discouraged, we want real Haskell source.

Five person jury:

    * Richard Braakman (dark)
    * Shae Erisson (shapr)
    * Ian Lynagh (Igloo)
    * Andrew Bromage (Pseudonym)
    * Manuel Chakravarty (Chilli)

We expect judging to take two to three weeks, but this is the 0th IOHCC, could
be shorter or longer.

Awards will depend on the specific entries, but may include:

    * best one-liner - less than 80 chars not counting imports
    * best .signature sized - 4x80 or 4x76 or whatever
    * best game
    * best H98-only program
    * best exploit of a compiler bug
    * most useful program
    * most creative layout
    * best abuse of implementation-specific extensions
    * best abuse of the type system
    * best abuse of category theory
    * worst abuse of the rules

Spirit, point, reason:

    * to seek out new lifeforms and new civilizations
    * to boldly go where no Haskell programmer has ever wanted to be! 

Semi-seriously, obfuscated code shows neat and unusual ways of structuring a
program, cool tricks, dark nooks and crannies you've never thought of, and is
generally a good way to shake off all that software discipline and stomp around
in the muddy world of spaghetti code for a quick vacation.
-- 
Shae Matijs Erisson - 2 days older than RFC0226
#haskell on irc.freenode.net - We Put the Funk in Funktion