GDC 07 Programmer's Challenge

[Iced_Eagle]

For all of you programmers out there, you will love this.

For non-programmers, you will get confused!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7887992164379673634&hl=en

Enjoy!

 

[Ennui]

The non-programmers among us are satisfied to be amused at the idea of a programming conference.

 

[63]

Someone summarize plz.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

The non-programmers among us are satisfied to be amused at the idea of a programming contest.

Fixed it It was part of the GDC.

Erm, there really is no way to summarize it. It's just a really funny look at the games industry in the programming realm.

If you aren't a programmer, then you might only get slightly amused by this since you won't understand like 95% of it.

 

[Ennui]

I was mostly referring to my personal delight at seeing dorky programmers being clapped for like celebrities, there's a kind of counterculture heartwarmingness to it

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Every group in their own has "celebrities"... Being a celebrity is a subjective term, and people usually refer to celebrities only as being actors or actresses.

Man let me tell you, I could probably talk to a person like Brad Pitt or whatever and not really care or give a sweat. However, when I talked to Gabe Newell for the first time at Valve, I couldn't even look in his eyes cause I was being so shy haha...

I would do the same thing with people such as John Carmack, Tim Sweeney and such... They are amazing and I would give them tons of applause

 

[Qhartb]

Cerealize = best question concept ever!

And I noticed the thing about pre-increment vs post-increment before they caught it.

 

[Asuka]

Dont know anything about programming, but that was really cool.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Cerealize = best question concept ever!

And I noticed the thing about pre-increment vs post-increment before they caught it.

That was one of the best parts!

"WAIT WAIT IT'S POST INCREMENT!"

 

[theotherguy]

lol, this is the kind of thing we need to do in computer science class.

 

[Dekstar]

That was actually pretty funny, even though I didn't understand hardly any of it xD.

"(!( Sam & Max ___ the ___
- ___ Rash )) ++
= Riven

Because Sam and Max: Hit the road - Road Rash (which just = Hit as road - road = 0)
The not of Hit is Miss
and the ++ of that is Riven"
Made me lol when they were like "Did you work that out or did you just go for the one word answer?"
"Nah I knew it"

and EDIT: Could someone explain the rules of cerealize to me? It sounded pretty funny.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Sure I'll explain it.

Okay, so a bit can be either 1 or 0, true or false. There were three bits.

Frosted | Fruity | Genus > 0

First two should be self explanatory of whether it's frosted or fruity or not. The last one (search for "Mathematical Genus" in a nut shell means "Does this cereal have any holes?". Something with a genus of zero has no holes, while something with a genus greater than zero has one or more holes. Now it's a true or false question, so it's asking "Does this object have a genus greater than zero?"

I'll explain the first one.

Trix | Cheerio

Now the OR operator basically compares the two and if a category in one of the objects is true, it remains true and doesn't matter what's in the other.

Continuing on.

Trix
Frosted = false
Fruity = true
Genus > 0 = false

Cheerios
Frosted = false
Fruity = false
Genus > 0 = true

Result
Frosted = false
Fruity = true
Genus > 0 = true


Then if you take a look at the choices you will see that Fruit Loops is the correct answer!

Understand it now?

 

[mindless_moder]

i didnt understand how they incremented and decremented words ? .
i looked up riven and its the sequel of myst so did they mean that its the increment of myst(which sounds like miss) ?.
it was pretty funny for the most part except for the fact that most of it was api , platform specific and i doubt any of us have worked on any of the api's and platforms that they mentioned well ... besides hlsl and maybe vista.

 

[Dekstar]

Thanks for the explanation Eagle, but I still probably wouldn't be able to read along and get answer before it was pointed out as correct or not, but that's just me.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Okay, I thought I hated programming from my computer course awhile back. Now I know for sure.

The non-programming questions were pretty funny though... can someone explain the recycle bin questions that had ++ or --? That went over my head, and I was trying to solve them for myself before they answered

 

[Iced_Eagle]

i didnt understand how they incremented and decremented words ? .
i looked up riven and its the sequel of myst so did they mean that its the increment of myst(which sounds like miss) ?.
it was pretty funny for the most part except for the fact that most of it was api , platform specific and i doubt any of us have worked on any of the api's and platforms that they mentioned well ... besides hlsl and maybe vista.

Well, you can't take it too much in the context of actual programming.

What they sort of meant was sort of the thing that came after Myst.
Or in terms of the movie with the decrementation of Return of the King, what movie was before it.

They just took some liberties with it, but it still makes sense.

Oh, and yea I guess you could explain that they were using were called Enumerations (google it), but it doesn't really matter cause you shouldn't think too much into this anyways!

 

[Dancingwllamas]

The non-programming questions were pretty funny though... can someone explain the recycle bin questions that had ++ or --? That went over my head, and I was trying to solve them for myself before they answered

At least in C++ (I don't know about other languages, but I would imagine it is the same in others), ++ and -- adds and subtracts one from the value respectively.

If A==5 and I type "A++", A becomes 6. That is why C++ is called what it is, it is adding one to the language C.

 

[mindless_moder]

Well, you can't take it too much in the context of actual programming.

What they sort of meant was sort of the thing that came after Myst.
Or in terms of the movie with the decrementation of Return of the King, what movie was before it.

They just took some liberties with it, but it still makes sense.

Oh, and yea I guess you could explain that they were using were called Enumerations (google it), but it doesn't really matter cause you shouldn't think too much into this anyways!

i figured as much. i wonder if there are vids of previous years.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

I looked but didn't see any...

If anybody can find previous years of this, I will be so happy

 

[mindless_moder]

hey Iced_eagle are you actually on the ES2 dev team ?.

 

[Dekstar]

At least in C++ (I don't know about other languages, but I would imagine it is the same in others), ++ and -- adds and subtracts one from the value respectively.

If A==5 and I type "A++", A becomes 6. That is why C++ is called what it is, it is adding one to the language C.

Ah that makes sense, because Riven was the sequel to Myst, or the ++ of it.
Yeah thanks that solved it.