Hi,

Back in the day, Borland used to host many programming competitions. (eg: Multi-threaded, graphics, algorithms etc). They were pretty cool.

Maybe we could start some Free Pascal competitions? Possibly get some sponsors for prices, or just for fun. eg: Get your name mentioned on the home page of Free Pascal website, get some bragging rights, or even have your name mentioned for one release cycle in the FPC logo output (next to Florian's name). :-) Apps should involve FPC of course, but should not be limited to LCL. We should be able to use Console, Web, LCL, fpGUI, MSEgui etc.. as long as the app is written in Object Pascal and compiles with FPC. Maybe a wiki page could be started to list competition ideas.

Most developers here seem to program for a living/work - maybe we could actually program for fun for a change. Imagine that! :-) What's your thoughts?

PS:
I thought of posting this in the fpc-users mailing list, but I think here are more developers.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Hi,

Back in the day, Borland used to host many programming competitions. (eg: Multi-threaded, graphics, algorithms etc). They were pretty cool.

Maybe we could start some Free Pascal competitions? Possibly get some sponsors for prices, or just for fun. eg: Get your name mentioned on the home page of Free Pascal website, get some bragging rights, or even have your name mentioned for one release cycle in the FPC logo output (next to Florian's name). :-) Apps should involve FPC of course, but should not be limited to LCL. We should be able to use Console, Web, LCL, fpGUI, MSEgui etc.. as long as the app is written in Object Pascal and compiles with FPC. Maybe a wiki page could be started to list competition ideas.

Most developers here seem to program for a living/work - maybe we could actually program for fun for a change. Imagine that! :-) What's your thoughts?

PS:
I thought of posting this in the fpc-users mailing list, but I think here are more developers.

Sounds good, if people were given awards for doing stuff, they could put it in their CV for jobs :)

- V
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Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

Maybe we could start some Free Pascal competitions?

Good idea.

What's your thoughts?

A couple questions (to us all):

-- Will there be some sort of selection commitee?

-- Will there be a restriction of licenses those applications can be submitted under?

Adem wrote

-- Will there be some sort of selection commitee?

I guess the community could do the voting themselves. Anybody willing to quickly put together a Free Pascal based CGI voting app? ;-) Or we can piggyback on Lazarus's Forum website which I believe has got a voting system built-in.

-- Will there be a restriction of licenses those applications can be submitted under?

Well as far as I understand, the initial intention of Borland was to use it as "educational" for Delphi developers, and obviously raise some awareness of Delphi features (multi-threading competition comes to mind) and Delphi itself. So I would think something that makes it free for all to see the source code and possibly use that code in there own works/projects. I don't know if GPL is sufficient (it will limit commercial use of that code), in which case maybe a BSD style license should be used. Any suggestions are welcome.

The main point of these competitions should be to educate other developers in new features or how to accomplish some task - giving them a nice working example to play with.

OK. This is a better idea --community suggesting applications, that is.

I hope I won't get flamed for suggesting this: But, if taken in moderation, capitalism (or merchantalism) isn't automatically bad.

So, I think, we should allow for material rewards of symbolic symbolic nature (i.e., symbolic bountines) from suggesters --such as a book or some such thing.

IANAL, but perhaps MPL could be a better solution. It does not restrict how the code is used yet keeps the originial developer in the loop (or mention list).

The main point of these competitions should be to educate other developers in new features or how to accomplish some task - giving them a nice working example to play with.

Indeed, concise sample/demo code is the best educational tool I have known of to date.

lol, i was at a socialist meeting a few weeks back, and going to another next week. i was surprised to find out i could solve many of their problems with the capitalist approach! i suspect they think the only capitalism is $billion businesses, and theyve forgotten the local shops, pubs, cleaners, self-employed, etc.

+1 MPL/BSD

absolutely agree. i often start out with copy & paste simple demo/example then use online reference to pad out with my specific needs.

- V
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