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: 764

Replies to This Discussion

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!
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.
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.
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.
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

Designing a Multi-Agent System for Engineering Support at Scale: A Case Study From Grab

Grab’s Central Data Team built a multi-agent AI system to automate repetitive engineering support tasks across its data warehouse platform. The system separates investigation and enhancement workflows using specialized agents coordinated via an orchestration layer. It reduces operational load, improves resolution speed, and shifts engineering effort from firefighting to platform engineering work.

By Leela Kumili

Presentation: The AI Gateway: Scaling Centralized Inference Across Decentralized Teams

Meryem Arik discusses why modern engineering teams face "inference chaos" and how AI model gateways provide a critical control layer. She explains the balance between empowering decentralized teams to choose the best models and maintaining centralized oversight for security, RBAC, and cost control. Explore open-source solutions like LiteLLM and Doubleword to streamline your AI infra.

By Meryem Arik

OpenAI Outlines WebRTC Architecture for Low-Latency Voice AI at Scale

OpenAI recently outlined how it adapted WebRTC for low-latency voice AI at global scale. The new architecture replaced a conventional media termination model with a relay-transceiver design better suited to Kubernetes and cloud load balancers. It keeps WebRTC session state in a dedicated transceiver layer while using relays to reduce public UDP exposure and keep media routing close to users.

By Eran Stiller

Pip 26.1 Ships Dependency Cooldowns and Experimental Lockfile Support to Combat Supply Chain Attacks

Pip 26.1 ships dependency cooldowns that enforce a waiting period before newly published packages can be installed, and experimental pylock.toml lockfile support from PEP 751. Research shows a 7-day cooldown would have prevented 8 out of 10 analyzed supply chain attacks from reaching end users.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers

Anthropic Introduces MCP Tunnels for Private Agent Access to Internal Systems

Anthropic has expanded its Claude Managed Agents platform with two enterprise-focused capabilities: self-hosted sandboxes and MCP tunnels. The release aims to address a recurring challenge in enterprise AI deployments, where organizations want to use autonomous agents but cannot allow execution environments or internal systems to leave their security perimeter.

By Robert Krzaczyński

© 2026   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service