What's going on?
The short and sweet is: A regular topic, someone post a challenge, people code stuff, someone wins.
List of previous challenges
Challenge 1: Flora..............................Winner: lorebringer generates fractal-based plant life on your browser. (post) (solution) (source)
Challenge 2: Mazes. (vote breakdown) Winner: FillerB generates isometric mazes from whatever image you want. (post) (submission/source)
Rules
How does it work?
A programming challenge is posted. Any NeoGAF member, this means you, can take part in it and can use any programming language he or she wants. Once you're happy with your submission, you point us to either a compilate or the source code. How you do this exactly is up to you. Just a screenshot or a video won't suffice though.
The challenge runs until a time decided by the challenge poster but can not last longer than 4 weeks. When time runs out, voting starts and will last for 1 or 2 days. After voting is finished the winner makes a new topic with a new challenge and the circle repeats.
How does voting work?
Each NeoGAF member gets one vote. After voting is started with an appropriate post, challenge submissions are still accepted, but will probably get less votes. All challenge submissions are rounded up in a post to make it easy to find them. They are listed in order of submission post date.
It is okay to submit multiple times, as long as the submissions are dissimilar enough from each other.
Members vote for submissions, not for posters. They do this by saying "I vote for (some submission)" or similar.
What do I win?
That is for the challenge poster to decide. It might only be internets, it might be a Steam game, whatever. Of course it makes sense if the challenge poster has made sure he can actually produce the price when it's time. Also, remember that NeoGAF has a global audience, so things like iTunes codes only work if the region applies, for instance.
The person who has posted the challenge cannot claim the prize. If said person wins his own challenge, the prize goes to the next-best participant. The right to post a new challenge remains with the winner though, it is not attached to the prize.
What kind of challenges are okay?
Don't post overly hard challenges. Don't post challenges that would take a lot of time to complete. Don't post challenges that are actually your homework assignments or similar. Don't post challenges that need a lot of research. Apart from that, pretty much anything goes.
Preferably, you post challenges that are cool for non-programmers to experience. That includes audio- and video-related challenges, and ones that demand input and create output of some kind. But that's not really mandatory.
Do I have to write perfect code?
No. It's not about perfect code. It's about programming for entertainment, coming up with a cool thing, showing it off, and being proud of it. So there is nothing that can disqualify you. Just don't destroy stuff or delete files with your code.
So you can certainly write shitty code and get away with it in here. You might get lucky though insofar as others might give you pointers on what you might want to do differently.
What about copyright, trademarks and all that?
Use common sense. For example, if you invent a new collision detection algorithm that dwarfs all other algorithms out there while you're coding for a challenge, you might not want to publish it without making sure you're satisfied with the results of said publishing. Other than that, assume you're writing public domain code because noone on these boards can guarantee you rights to anything.
Of course, you cannot use trademarked content, and you have to respect the copyright of others. We're not above the law just because we're having a friendly coding challenge.
What are the go-to languages for this?
C, C++, Python, Java, C#, Objective C, Javascript.
Can I use custom frameworks, obscure platforms, esoteric programming languages?
If you do this, you need to be able to make it trivial for everyone to check your stuff out. For example, if you want to use LÖVE, then go ahead, but do it with the current release, and provide instructions on how to run your solution. If someone else has already posted run instructions, then it suffices to reference that post.
Where can I go to get help regarding all things programming?
Provided you've already used a search engine to dig for answers, you're of course welcome in the Programming |OT|
The short and sweet is: A regular topic, someone post a challenge, people code stuff, someone wins.
List of previous challenges
Challenge 1: Flora..............................Winner: lorebringer generates fractal-based plant life on your browser. (post) (solution) (source)
Challenge 2: Mazes. (vote breakdown) Winner: FillerB generates isometric mazes from whatever image you want. (post) (submission/source)
Rules
How does it work?
A programming challenge is posted. Any NeoGAF member, this means you, can take part in it and can use any programming language he or she wants. Once you're happy with your submission, you point us to either a compilate or the source code. How you do this exactly is up to you. Just a screenshot or a video won't suffice though.
The challenge runs until a time decided by the challenge poster but can not last longer than 4 weeks. When time runs out, voting starts and will last for 1 or 2 days. After voting is finished the winner makes a new topic with a new challenge and the circle repeats.
How does voting work?
Each NeoGAF member gets one vote. After voting is started with an appropriate post, challenge submissions are still accepted, but will probably get less votes. All challenge submissions are rounded up in a post to make it easy to find them. They are listed in order of submission post date.
It is okay to submit multiple times, as long as the submissions are dissimilar enough from each other.
Members vote for submissions, not for posters. They do this by saying "I vote for (some submission)" or similar.
What do I win?
That is for the challenge poster to decide. It might only be internets, it might be a Steam game, whatever. Of course it makes sense if the challenge poster has made sure he can actually produce the price when it's time. Also, remember that NeoGAF has a global audience, so things like iTunes codes only work if the region applies, for instance.
The person who has posted the challenge cannot claim the prize. If said person wins his own challenge, the prize goes to the next-best participant. The right to post a new challenge remains with the winner though, it is not attached to the prize.
What kind of challenges are okay?
Don't post overly hard challenges. Don't post challenges that would take a lot of time to complete. Don't post challenges that are actually your homework assignments or similar. Don't post challenges that need a lot of research. Apart from that, pretty much anything goes.
Preferably, you post challenges that are cool for non-programmers to experience. That includes audio- and video-related challenges, and ones that demand input and create output of some kind. But that's not really mandatory.
Do I have to write perfect code?
No. It's not about perfect code. It's about programming for entertainment, coming up with a cool thing, showing it off, and being proud of it. So there is nothing that can disqualify you. Just don't destroy stuff or delete files with your code.
So you can certainly write shitty code and get away with it in here. You might get lucky though insofar as others might give you pointers on what you might want to do differently.
What about copyright, trademarks and all that?
Use common sense. For example, if you invent a new collision detection algorithm that dwarfs all other algorithms out there while you're coding for a challenge, you might not want to publish it without making sure you're satisfied with the results of said publishing. Other than that, assume you're writing public domain code because noone on these boards can guarantee you rights to anything.
Of course, you cannot use trademarked content, and you have to respect the copyright of others. We're not above the law just because we're having a friendly coding challenge.
What are the go-to languages for this?
C, C++, Python, Java, C#, Objective C, Javascript.
Can I use custom frameworks, obscure platforms, esoteric programming languages?
If you do this, you need to be able to make it trivial for everyone to check your stuff out. For example, if you want to use LÖVE, then go ahead, but do it with the current release, and provide instructions on how to run your solution. If someone else has already posted run instructions, then it suffices to reference that post.
Where can I go to get help regarding all things programming?
Provided you've already used a search engine to dig for answers, you're of course welcome in the Programming |OT|
