[Brazosvalley-pm] Perl banned from competition - 1997

[Ray Morris]

    Remind's me of a (mis)quote -

    A good C programmer can write a Perl interpreter,
but a good Perl programmer can write a C pretty
printer before the C programmer is half way done
declaring variables.

    The original quote was C versus VB, but I figure
it applies.  I don't recall if that was Bruce McKinney
or Dan Appleman who said that ...
--
Ray B. Morris
support at bettercgi.com

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On 05/19/2006 09:19:34 AM, Jeremy Fluhmann wrote:
> At the social meeting, I mentioned a story about Perl being banned
> from
> a competition for making the contest problems too easy to solve.
> Here
> is a copy of the original article....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean J. Edwards
> 
> Originally posted on www.perl.org in 1997:
> 
>                           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 reportedly a sysadmin at Yahoo! Inc., and is
> wondering what to do with the copy of Visual C++ that was his prize.
> 
> --
> -=Sean Edwards=-
> 
> 
> 
> 

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