Codetown
Codetown ::: a software developer's community
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: 689
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Kevin Neelands on
-
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
-
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
-
I am catching this with only 3 hours to go. Does the program have to be about the Wari game?
-
-
-
Yes, the program has to be about the Wari game. Now, wait until you see the next contest!
-
-
-
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
-
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/
-
-
-
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. -
-
-
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/ -
-
-
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!
-
-
-
The Ruby meeting that I mentioned has been cancelled.
-
-
-
Here's a shot of Eric Lavigne (l) receiving his prize for winning the coding contest from Mike Levin. -
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.
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.
InfoQ Reading List
C++26 Draft Finalized with Static Reflection, Contracts, and Sender/Receiver Types
The next major release of C++ reached an important milestone earlier this month, when the ISO C++ committee froze the feature set that will go into C++26. Notable additions include compile-time reflection, contracts, asynchronous execution, and many others.
By Sergio De SimonePresentation: Continuous Delivery Is Not Possible Without Pair Programming: Lessons From SpareBank 1 and SINTEF in Norway
Asgaut Mjølne Söderbom and Ola Hast unravel the powerful synergy between pair programming and continuous delivery. They explain how this shift allowed their team to abandon traditional hurdles like excessive WIP, lengthy pull requests, and multiple test environments, leading to ultra-fast deployments, superior code quality, and a highly cohesive, efficient engineering team.
By Asgaut Mjølne Söderbom, Ola HastAWS Lambda Gains Native Avro and Protobuf Support for Kafka Events with Schema Registry Integration
Lambda now natively supports Apache Avro and Protobuf events, streamlining Kafka event processing - an enhancement that eliminates the need for custom deserialization, automates schema validation and filtering, and optimizes costs through efficient event handling. Integration with AWS Glue and Confluent registries simplifies development, allowing cleaner data consumption and enhanced scalability.
By Steef-Jan WiggersArticle: Building Strategic Influence as a Staff Engineer or Engineering Manager
To increase your impact and grow your career, you need to be involved in conversations that happen at a greater scope than the scope you have in your current role. Being involved will give you influence over this, help you direct and maximise your impact, and also allow you to bring better context to your day job, and to those working around you.
By Mark AllenPodcast: From Code to Strategy: Drive Organizational Impact Through Strategic Conversations and User Focus
In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Mark Allen about how engineers can expand their influence through strategic conversations, user-focused development practices, and excellence in incident management. Mark emphasizes the importance of building cross-organizational relationships and working on meaningful problems with positive impact.
By Mark Allen
© 2025 Created by Michael Levin.
Powered by
