The Coding Contest - 2nd place
June 29, 2005, 2:04:43 pm

Wow, that was fun. The live thrashing back and forth between the clients at the end was great.

While my code had no bugs, it turns out that the most important part of the AI is how it chooses to take coins from the middle. In my case, I was taking biggest coin value. In Kevin's case, he didn't have time to be tricky so he was taking from the bottom-up.

Bottom-up turns out to be better in a naive sort of way. Middle out, we both agree, is the best answer. Congratulations Kevin and Blaine. It was a lot of fun. May be I'll give it a go again next year :)

2nd place gave me a nice shiny new iPod. Actually, I'm sort of glad I didn't win 1st place - the $1000 prize can only be used to go to Camp Smalltalk - I have no idea when I would ever get to do that.

By James Robertson on July 1, 2005, 12:48:58 pm

Trackback from Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants
Coding Contest Wrap up by James Robertson

Jason Jones announces the results of the coding contest:

The Smalltalk Industry Council is pleased to announce the results of the second portion of the first annual Smalltalk Solutions Coding Contest. The winners for the Second portion of the contest are:

  • 1st Place: Kevin Badinger
  • 2nd Place: Michael Lucas-Smith
  • 3rd Place: Blaine Buxton

For those of you who missed the action:

Congratulations to everyone and thanks for helping make this year's show one of the best ever.

Congratulations to all the entrants!