Lambda the Ultimate

Dyalog has the pleasure of announcing the start of the 2012 edition of our World Wide APL Programming Contest. The deadline for submissions this year is August 5th, 2012. The terms and conditions, and the tasks to be solved can be found at: http://www.dyalog.com/contest_2012

For students, the Grand Prize is US$2,500 plus round trip travel and registration to the Dyalog ‘12 Conference in Elsinore, Denmark, commencing October 14th 2012.

Second and third prizes are US$1,200 and US$600 respectively and up to 20 other contestants will receive $100 each.

This year’s contest also features a grand prize for non-students – a complimentary registration to the Dyalog ’12 Conference.

Additionally, the people or organisations that refer the winning students to the contest will receive the same dollar prizes – and they need not be students to make the introduction. This means that you (or if you prefer, your institution) will receive an amount equal to any prizes won by students that you have referred to the competition.

The purpose of the contest is encourage students and others to investigate APL; the organisers hope that participants will find that exposure to APL broadens their horizons and adds a new tool to their toolbox.

Students of other disciplines than Computer Science are also encouraged to participate; many of the most successful APL users have backgrounds in other sciences, and have found APL to be a “Tool of Thought” for expressing solutions to problems in a wide variety of fields. Our 2010 competition was won by Ryan Tarpine, a computational biologist from Brown University and last year’s grand prize winner, Joel Hough, discovered the contest through Lambda the Ultimate. Presentations by Ryan and Joel about their experiences and impressions of competing can be found on the contest website at: http://www.dyalog.com/contest_2012

There is no requirement to purchase a copy of Dyalog APL.

A fully featured copy of the latest release of Dyalog APL is available free of charge to students, whether or not they choose to participate in the contest.

Non-students may download a free, unregistered, version of Dyalog APL, also whether or not they choose to participate in the contest.

Contestants are also welcome to use other APL implementations, subject to the guidelines described on the contest website.

A total of US$12,600 in prize money has been provided by several sponsors, including US-based Fiserv, Italy-based APL Italiana, Denmark-based SimCorp and UK-based Dyalog Ltd., as well as several anonymous individuals and companies.