Conference hydra::amiga_v1

2309.0. "Have you read this?" by SMAUG::SPODARYK (Jefferson, I think we're lost.) Thu Mar 02 1989 14:46

<><><><><><><><>  T h e   V O G O N   N e w s   S e r v i c e  <><><><><><><><>


VNS TECHNOLOGY WATCH:                           [Mike Taylor, VNS Correspondent]
=====================                           [Nashua, NH, USA               ]

                   World's Fastest Programmer Contest

    The high point of the 1988 Real-Time Programming Convention in
    Anaheim, California, Nov 18-19, 1988, was the World's Fastest
    Programmer Contest dreamed up by Martin Tracy, convention chairman
    and a senior programmer at Forth Inc. The rules were simple and
    straightforward: contestants were allowed to bring a computer and
    the programming language of their choice and could work
    individually or in teams. Each was provided with a hardware device
    that could be interfaced to the computer but whose nature wasn't
    known in advance. The object was to make the device perform as
    described by the conference chairman; the first person to finish
    would win $1,000. 

    As it turned out, the hardware device for the contest--referred to
    hereafter as the Gizmo--was nothing short of inspired. Though
    built from a handful of parts that cost very little, it was an
    excellent challenge of the contestants' abilities to write
    real-time control programs. The Gizmo consisted of a hacksaw blade
    mounted vertically on a stand with a solenoid attached near the
    base and a seven-bar Radio Shack LED on the free end. The solenoid
    was controlled by a two-transistor complementary Darlington
    circuit, and the entire contraption was interfaced to the host
    computer by a Centronics connector with one line driving the
    solenoid and five others connected to the LED. 

    When the solenoid was pulsed at appropriate intervals, the
    hacksaw blade would swing back and forth at a constant rate like
    an upside-down pendulum. Text could then be displayed and scrolled
    by turning the LED's bars on and off as it moved, taking advantage
    of persistence of vision to form the illusion of characters.
    Finding the resonant frequency of the hacksaw blade and the proper
    timings for the display turned out to require quite a bit of
    interactive experimentation, for which Forth is of course uniquely
    suited. 

    The winners were Phil Burk and Michael Haas of Delta Research,
    who convinced their Gizmo to scroll the message 'The Rain in Spain
    Falls Mainly on the Plain' in only one hour and 20 minutes. They
    used their own Forth interpreter/compiler, called JForth, and an
    *Amiga* computer.  Not bad pay for less than two hours' work, no
    matter what kind of consulting rates you're used to! I hope that
    at next year's convention we see even more contestants, a broader
    selection of programming languages and computers, and another
    fascinating Gizmo to be programmed.

    {Embedded Systems Programming Vol 2 No. 1 From the column "When
    in ROM" by Ray Duncan, column titled "Of Rhealstone and Real-Time,"} 
    {Contributed by Wes Plouff}