Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!dsinc!netnews.upenn.edu!msuinfo!rang From: rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) Newsgroups: comp.org.acm Subject: Re: Programming languages/different machines in contests Message-ID: Date: 14 May 91 22:23:56 GMT References: <6X3B-PB@xds13.ferranti.com> <1494@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> <1991May9.010805.21605@mcs.kent.edu> <1991May12.213538.1544@agate.berkeley.edu> Sender: news@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu Organization: UW-Madison CS department Lines: 25 In-Reply-To: dwallach@soda.berkeley.edu's message of 12 May 91 21:35:38 GMT In article <1991May12.213538.1544@agate.berkeley.edu> dwallach@soda.berkeley.edu (Dan Wallach) writes: >I'd like to bring up a different topic with regard to contests: should >they always be on PC's? I don't see any real reason why they should or shouldn't be, except that a bunch of PCs is probably easiest to set up. The first regional contest I went to was on a VAX/VMS system, with a little menu-driven system so if you didn't know VMS commands you weren't at a particular disadvantage (though knowing the editor helped), and so that you could only do editing, compiles, prints, and (electronic) submissions. It seemed to work better than the PC-based contests I've been at, simply because of the electronic submission capabilities, and because compiles and prints both ran at very reasonable speeds. Also, it made restricting the contest to the standard languages (Standard Pascal and FORTRAN 77) trivial. >For college contests, however, workstations would be lots nicer [ ... ] Yes, I think it would be possible to run a contest with some sort of workstation (say, a net of diskless Sun 3/50s). It'd be more work than using PCs, though, and I suspect one can make an argument that using PCs is more "fair" because more colleges have PCs than have any particular kind of workstation.... Anton +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+----------------+ | Anton Rang (grad student) | rang@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison | "VMS Forever!" | +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+----------------+