Wari - Contest #1


Senegal is a land of magic and mystery. People there use their heads for recreation! How? Well, here's an example. The photo you see above is a game called Wari I got in Kaolack, Senegal. I went to Sengal to give the opening presentation for the SeneJUG. The rules are pretty simple. You move the beans around and the winner takes all the opponent's beans. Here are the rules, a little more specifically.

Now, here's the challenge. Write a program, any way you like, and show the Contest Town something that works, and you win! Cambridge Web Design will sponsor this first contest, and the winner will get a check for $50. The deadline for submitting your entry is midnight, tonight - December 27, 2009, Eastern Standard Time USA.

Yep, that's not much time, but you know what to do. CWD will judge the winning entry based on completeness, user interface (if any), and elegance. CWD will be the sole judge, and CWD's decision is final.

Submit your entry to this email address: contest @ codetown dot us. You can send a link to a web app, a binary, anything you think shows a complete solution that we can run here at CWD HQ, in the Swamp.

If you have questions, just ping me at contest @ codetown dot us.

If there are no entries by midnight tonight, stay tuned. We'll extend the deadline and let you know what the new rules are. Good luck!

Views: 693

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kevin Neelands on December 27, 2009 at 2:34pm
Extend the deadline a week or two and I might take a shot. Today's schedule revolves around the 'Life on Mars' DVD I got for christmas. Sis says the show is offbeat, weird, and full of strange twists. Kinda like me.
Looking back, I'm not certain that was a compliment!
Permalink Reply by Michael Levin on December 27, 2009 at 3:23pm
Well, let's look at this as Contest 1, Phase 1. But, think about it. Wari is a universally well known game, The possibilities are broad. It could be an iPhone program. Let me see...yes just as I thought. No Wari for iPhone. Think of what people are missing out on in the game world. You should have seen me playing with the vender in Kaolack. I learned the rules in just a few minutes, but it was a very challenging game. And, he won. They are selling it in Starbucks these days!

As for "offbeat, weird, and full of strange twists", it beats being boring.
Permalink Reply by Karim Diff on December 27, 2009 at 9:03pm
I am catching this with only 3 hours to go. Does the program have to be about the Wari game?
Permalink Reply by Michael Levin on December 27, 2009 at 10:29pm
Yes, the program has to be about the Wari game. Now, wait until you see the next contest!
Permalink Reply by Karim Diff on December 27, 2009 at 10:54pm
OK. Then I won't have time to put something together. I'll wait for the next contest and learn the rules of the game in the meantime.
Permalink Reply by Eric Lavigne on December 28, 2009 at 12:13am
I wrote a web app in Clojure. You can play the game at http://ericlavigne.net:8054 or see the source code at http://github.com/ericlavigne/island-wari/
Permalink Reply by Michael Levin on December 28, 2009 at 12:08pm

We have a winner! Congrats, Eric. I ran the app on my Mac and from your website. Would you like to collect your $50 prize immediately via PayPal or in person at the next GatorJUG meeting? I'd love to devote the meeting in part to describing your Clojure implementation.
Permalink Reply by Eric Lavigne on December 28, 2009 at 12:26pm
Thanks, Michael. I prefer to pick it up in person because I don't often use PayPal.

I would be happy to talk about my code, but I don't think it will take a large chunk of the meeting. It is just one file with about 100 lines of code, plus a folder full of images.

I delivered a Clojure presentation earlier this year for GatorJUG. If anyone is interested in hearing about Clojure again, I'll be delivering the same presentation again (with minor updates) tomorrow evening for a Ruby user group.

http://www.meetup.com/gainesville-ruby-users/calendar/12048499/
Permalink Reply by Michael Levin on December 28, 2009 at 12:58pm
Perfect. We'll update the meeting announcement with a blurb about your description of the Clojure app you wrote to win the first Contest Town contest. Thanks, Eric. You rock!
Permalink Reply by Eric Lavigne on December 28, 2009 at 3:03pm
The Ruby meeting that I mentioned has been cancelled.
Permalink Reply by Michael Levin on January 15, 2010 at 1:44pm

Here's a shot of Eric Lavigne (l) receiving his prize for winning the coding contest from Mike Levin.
Permalink Reply by Lamine Ba on February 17, 2010 at 7:55am
In this last photo, it looks more like a million dollars, than $50!!! :)

Lamine

RSS

Happy 10th year, JCertif!

Notes

Welcome to Codetown!

Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.

When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
Continue

Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.

Looking for Jobs or Staff?

Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

 

Enjoy the site? Support Codetown with your donation.



InfoQ Reading List

Java News Roundup: Spring Framework 7.0, Spring Data, Spring AI, Payara Platform, OpenJDK, JobRunr

This week's Java roundup for November 10th, 2025, features news highlighting: OpenJDK JEPs targeted for JDK 26; the GA release of Spring Framework 7.0; point releases of Spring Data, Spring AI, JobRunr and Jox; the November 2025 edition of Payara Platform; the fifth release candidate of Maven 4.0; and a maintenance release of Micronaut.

By Michael Redlich

KubeCon NA 2025 - Erica Hughberg and Alexa Griffith on Tools for the Age of GenAI

Generative AI technologies need to support new workloads, traffic patterns, and infrastructure demands and require a new set of tools for the age of GenAI. Erica Hughberg from Tetrate and Alexa Griffith from Bloomberg spoke last week at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025 Conference about what it takes to build GenAI platforms capable of serving model inference at scale.

By Srini Penchikala

Presentation: AI-Driven Software Delivery: Leveraging Lean, ChOP & LLMs to Create More Effective Learning Experiences at QCon

Wes Reisz discusses an experiment to deliver a QCon certification using a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture and supervised coding agents (Claude Sonnet/Cursor). He breaks down the 4-week serverless video transcription pipeline, RAG variations (hybrid, graph), and the process of structuring prompts for 95% AI-generated code.

By Wesley Reisz

Code Arena Launches as a New Benchmark for Real-World AI Coding Performance

LMArena has launched Code Arena, a new evaluation platform that measures AI models' performance in building complete applications instead of just generating code snippets. It emphasizes agentic behavior, allowing models to plan, scaffold, iterate, and refine code within controlled environments that replicate actual development workflows.

By Robert Krzaczyński

AWS Introduces Remote Build Cache in ECR to Accelerate Docker Image Builds

Amazon Web Services has announced enhancements to its CodeBuild service, allowing teams to use Amazon ECR as a remote Docker layer cache, significantly reducing image build times in CI/CD pipelines. By leveraging ECR repositories to persist and reuse build layers across runs, organisations can skip rebuilding unchanged parts of containers and accelerate delivery.

By Craig Risi

© 2025   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service