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ICFP contest
Jul. 21st, 2007 02:00 pmThe ICFP Programming Contest is well under way. Recall that last year we were given an alien codex that turned out to be executable code. After we wrote a virtual machine for the alien codex, we were plopped into a sort of unix hacking text-adventure, filled with various puzzles. This year we're given a huge strand of alien DNA, and instructions on how to interpret the DNA!
The DNA turns out to be a strange pattern-matching language that ultimately spits out another code--RNA!--which in turn gets translated into an image. The goal is to come up with new strands of DNA that we can prepend to the alien DNA to transform the image in various ways.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
evan, four, and I have been working on it since about 3am PDT on Friday. The Task hints at one DNA prefix that will "do something interesting;" it turns out to invoke a self-check:
Well, we apparently still have some bugs in our virtual machine, somewhere--hence the corruption in the self-check... And we have only barely scratched the surface of figuring out how the DNA codex actually works.
The DNA turns out to be a strange pattern-matching language that ultimately spits out another code--RNA!--which in turn gets translated into an image. The goal is to come up with new strands of DNA that we can prepend to the alien DNA to transform the image in various ways.
evan, four, and I have been working on it since about 3am PDT on Friday. The Task hints at one DNA prefix that will "do something interesting;" it turns out to invoke a self-check:Well, we apparently still have some bugs in our virtual machine, somewhere--hence the corruption in the self-check... And we have only barely scratched the surface of figuring out how the DNA codex actually works.
