fwd: golf invite

[Adam Turoff <ziggy@panix.com>]

----- Forwarded message from Uri Guttman <uri@sysarch.com> -----

	Announcing the First Annual Perl Golf Apocalypse

Larry Wall, the father of Perl, has observed that the three virtues of a
programmer are laziness, impatience, and hubris.  Laziness has been
explained as doing more with less. A variation of that is doing the same
with less. For quite a while the newsgroup comp.lang.perl.misc has had
threads where each poster was trying to solve a basic problem with
shorter code than the previous post. This type of coding competition was
named Perl Golf by Greg Bacon because in both Perl and physical golf the
goal is to finish with the fewest (key)strokes.

Now the Perl Golf Committee (led by Uri, who conceived the idea) has been
hard at work organizing a Perl Golf Tournament for the 4th Perl Conference
in Monterey this July.

The Perl Golf Apocalypse (PGA) is for 10 teams, each comprised of up to 3
Perl hackers. Each team will be given its own computer to use and will
to try to solve a set of simple problems by writing a short piece of
Perl code.  Each team must submit its code, which will then be tested and
compared to the answers from the other teams.  Each problem (or hole as
we call them) will be given to all the teams at the same time and will
have a time limit (about 5-7 minutes, depending on the hole).  There
will be 9 holes in all and after 4 of them the 5 lowest scoring teams
will be cut (just like in real golf tournaments).

There are three ways to score points on a hole.

  * First, if the code submitted by a team correctly solves the
    problem, 1 point is awarded.

  * Second, the correct answer with the fewest keystrokes is awarded 6
    points with the next two runners up getting 5 and 4 points each.

  * Third, the correct answer which was submitted the earliest, is
    awarded 3 points with the next two runners up getting 2 and 1 points
    each.

So a team can earn a maximum of 10 points on one hole.  It is important
to note that the execution speed of the code is not a factor in scoring.

The holes will be judged by a Perl script created by us. It will check
the correctness of all the submissions, rank them by the shortest code
and also rank them by the timestamps on the submitted answer files. Then
the script will award points and keep track of scores for each
team. Another script will be used by the commentators to display the
current point totals for the teams, the scoring for a given hole and the
actual code submitted by the teams.

After all the holes are finished, the teams will be ranked by score, and
from highest to lowest, they will be allowed to choose their prizes. The
prize list includes computers, refrigerators stuffed with booty, cruise
discounts, cdroms, books, clothing, etc.  Everyone who enters the
tournament is guaranteed a prize.

Our two guests, Chip Salzenberg and Chris Nandor will provide
an entertaining commentary on the proceedings.


This invitation is being sent to the Perl Mongers in advance of other
groups to give you a first chance to register to play in the PGA.
Groups of 3 or 2 registering together as a team will be given preference
over single entrants, so get your local monger group to enter a team.

Send your registration request to golf@sysarch.com with this
information:

	Monger Affiliation
	Team Name
	Member Count
	Real name and email for each team member

	If you are a single entrant, do you want us to put you on a
	team?

	Optionally, tell us your level of perl experience

You can also visit the Perl Golf page at
http://www.sysarch.com/perl/golf/ which has the PGA rules and
invitation, the prize and sponsor list, a real golfing thread from
c.l.p.misc, and more.

The Perl Golf Apocalypse Team

Uri Guttman
Brand Hilton
Ronald Kimball
Larry Rosler
Damian Conway



-- 
Uri Guttman  ---------  uri@sysarch.com  ----------  http://www.sysarch.com
SYStems ARCHitecture, Software Engineering, Perl, Internet, UNIX Consulting
The Perl Books Page  -----------  http://www.sysarch.com/cgi-bin/perl_books
The Best Search Engine on the Net  ----------  http://www.northernlight.com


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