Monday, September 02, 2002

Interesting C library for dynamic arrays - Judy. A 10 minute overview of the algorithm is available. From the website: The Judy family of functions supports fully dynamic arrays. These arrays may be indexed by a 32- or 64-bit word (depending on the processor) or a string. A dynamic array that is sparsely populated can be thought of as a mapping function. [...] Judy arrays are both speed- and memory-efficient, with no tuning or configuration required, across a wide range of index set types (sequential, periodic, clustered, random). Judy's speed and memory usage are typically better than other data storage models such as skiplists, binary trees, b-trees, or even hashing, and improves with very large data sets. 2:01:43 PM

Lemonodor reports on a Common Lisp ICFP team. Go Lisp! 1:44:02 PM

We were hoping to submit a Lightning entry (an entry that had to be submitted within 24 hours) but about an hour before the deadline I got an email from the judges saying that we couldn't submit both a lightning entry and a normal entry. FAQ 17 was then posted saying this. So we left the lightning entry and got to work on the full entry. A few hours after the lighting deadline the rules changed. FAQ 17 was updated and an email went out stating that it was now possible to submit both a lightning entry and a normal entry. After the lightning entry deadline had already gone. I wasn't impressed. I suspect some teams entered the lightning part without realising that that prevented them from doing the full competition. A few complaints and the rule changes. There is currently a rule stating that each team may only submit one normal entry. I don't see how they can restrict multiple entries. What's to stop a team from working on the framework then splitting into separate teams each working on a different robot implementing  different strategies? Technically they are then separate teams with separate entries. They just happen to be using the same programming language and framework. As a result, I wouldn't be surprised if after the competition is closed the rules change again and allow multiple entries from teams. 11:05:17 AM

The ICFP 2002 started a couple of days ago. The task description was posted. Then a FAQ was made available. I'm involved in the Dylan Hackers entry. Using the Dylan programming language. Most everyone in the team is using Gwydion Dylan on Linux or Mac OS. I used the commercial Dylan IDE, Functional Developer, on Windows. This enabled me to use the high level debugging and code browsing facilities. I'd then test the build on Linux using Gwydion Dylan. I worked mainly on handling the responses from the server and dealing with issues there. Once I got over the hoop of making the code portable so it would compile using Functional Developer as well as Gwydion Dylan. Thankfully that didn't require much effort at all. Mainly it was the TCP socket code. 11:00:36 AM