POWERSAW was a very tough POTM - probably the toughest yet. Therefore, the consolation prizes are even more important than usual ... please enjoy them!
*** "Best Team Award": Pavel Ouvarov and Frederic van der Plancke It was easy to pick THIS winner ... two regular POTM participants joined together to make a winning entry! What is most significant is the makeup of the team ... Pavel programs on UNIX systems and Frederic does Windows programming! As Frederic says: "this team is mixing water and fire ;-)". The fact that Pavel is from Protvino (near Moscow) and Frederic hails from Brussels was just a minor inconvenience compared to their UNIX/MS backgrounds! *** "Best Program Name": cSaw from Doug Jones I knew this was a winner when it was first submitted. As Doug puts it: "A combination of the language name and Saw that sounds like an unrelated word". BUT, he confesses: "Actually, my code is written in C++, but I didn't like c++Saw or cSaw++". *** "Second Best Program Name But They Already Got Too Many Awards" Award goes to "Yalta". As Pavel writes in his questionairre: This name was suggested by Frederic. I can quote one of his early mails to me: "I thought of a name for our entry. I hope you don't mind the pun: "Yalta" ... where the world was divided in "East" and "West" in 1945. And I promise that will be their last award ... for THIS POTM. *** "Bang For The Buck" Award to Andrew Gauld for JigSaw JigSaw managed a third place finish with a total time 2 orders of magnitude less than the other high-placed entries. How? Andrew's questionairre itemizes several different approaches he tries on each problem, and then picks the best solution. No genetic engineering, no recursive optimization, no big words of any kind in fact. There's a lesson in there somewhere I think ... especially if you're an old-timer who remembers paying for computing time by the CPU-minute! *** "Best Excuse" Award to Ted Alper Ted writes: "I hoped to get around to writing a program, but our new baby has filled what little free time I had... " I figured I give Ted an award now, because it gets worse before it gets better ... but it's a helluva lot more rewarding than dumb programming contests! *** "Best Programming Advice Given" to Paul Banta Paul writes: "(if I had it to do over) I'd put comments in as I coded. Java has a nifty comment extracting tool that would have been great if I had put comments in." Paul - programming tools can only go so far ... *** "Send Me Some E-Mail" Award to Denis Konovalchik Denis writes: I would like to find some friends abroad and to exchange e-letters with them. Denis lives in Magnitogorsk City, Russia and his email is denisk@compassplus.ru Drop him a line! *** "The Aim High" Award to David Mishelashvili (LumberJack) David writes: "My age is 20; My goal of life is (from the time when I write my first program for MK-52) to become The Best Programmer Of The Planet, and I think that POTM is good starting place for it". You're on the way - we'll look for your name in future POTM lists! *** "Best Law" Award to Randy Saint Randy quoted Hofstadter's Law: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." *** "Longest Program Name" Award to Kevin Williams for "Who_was_that_woman_I_ sawed_you_with_last_night__That_was_no_woman_that_was_my_half_sister" Kevin writes: "It's a tribute to Walt Kelley, who drew the old Pogo comic strip ... If you've never read Pogo, think of Doonesbury with animals set in Okefenokee Swamp. If you have read Pogo, you probably miss it as much as I do." *** Hutzpah Award to Shalender Singh, who wrote in an email: "Here's a much improved version of the program. I've a request, Can we extend the last submission date?" hehe ... sorry, but no. *** Best Overall Response to a Questionairre to Vasudev Seeram The website has the unabridged version, here are some excerpts! *) I have to start exercising, my lack of exercise is beginning to show (around my belly). *) We are currently working on our Y2K project (get this: Sept 1999 and we are working on this god-forsaken project) ... I think I am going to switch careers to dentistry come Dec, 31st, 1999. *) ... romantic love is a lie, is a lie, is a goddamn lie! 'Love' is a genetically programmed lie that ensures the continuation of the species by tricking us into marriage. Yeah yeah, she liked someone else, the guy was a moron, man! *) The path of pleasure is a dark and dangerous path. But it is a seductive path, where many are lured ... *) Until then, I walk alone. Cold, calculated and emotionally distant. Bond. James Bond. Vasudev ... stay with us ... there's only the next POTM. And in case of emergencies, email Susan Adams at buttgirl_69@yahoo.com ... a participant in the previous POTM! *** "Wood Chipper" Award to Ossama Abdel-Hamid for Rusty_saw Rusty_saw created the most pieces over the three problems. What's more amazing is that Ossama didn't even use all the cuts he was allowed! Score on sliver is 907 based on 67 pieces from 10 lines. Score on midway is 1018 based on 29 pieces from 8 lines. Score on 950 is 928 based on 55 pieces from 9 lines. A Shop-vac vacuum cleaner is on the way!!! *** "Worst Disease" Award goes to Ranjeet Bhatia who writes: " ... the above algorithm can be very neatly coded RECURSIVELY but i didnt try (I suffer from recursion debugging phobia. which keeps on recurring whenever I think of implementing recursion.)