ICFP contest has got me feeling kind of down about programming. I really don't like the problem this year. I had my hopes up that since they had moved from "submit data or toy language program" to "submit real program to be run on real machine" that there was going to be some exciting new idea to the problem, but it's totally the same ol' "write a program for a robot living in some little toy world that competes well against other robots" thing. The twist on it I guess is that you have to sort of cooperate in the cops-and-robbers problem with other cop-bots while simultaneously competing with them. Still, the ant problem, being as it was sort of a different programming experience (since it was weirdly parallel), was vastly more fun.
