BreakPoint
New Coding Challenges?
Hi all,
Some years ago I remember reading with interest about the LabVIEW Coding Challenges, but never before felt confident enough to take any up.
The community page seems to indicate that the last one was in 2005. Are the Coding Challenges no longer offered?
The coding challenges where intially offered by Ni and when they lost interest (about the time we started beating Ni internal entries 
) Bruce Ammons (another LabVIEW Champion, yeah LV Champions! ) stepped up and started sponsoring the challenges. Sponsorship is critical because someone has to write the rules and evaluate the submisions.
There have been a number of attmptes to get a challenge going over on LAVA and the only one that took off and went anywhere was the challenge to re-write the "3-button dialog" since it was a stacked sequence nightmare. I think only three people took that one on. Jim Kring used it as an oppertunity to showcase his JKI tools so he won that one.
So there are two issue that must be confronted if you want to see another challenge.
1) Who will sponsor?
2) A Challenge that people will want to take on. This is not so easy and I should throw out some Kudos to Bruce for coming up with some good ideas. These are challenging since there are some criteria that weigh heavily in the success of teh challenge.
A) The Challenge should be interesting, perhaps solving an age old challenge (like prime numbers) a game (Tic-Tac-Toe), or something useful (the Dictionary Challenge).
B) No non-LV domain expertice required ie I don't have to be a PHD to compete.
C) Can be completed in a resonable amount of time since these are spare time projects.
D) Educational so we learn something as a result.
Re: Educational
Apart form reading Greg McKaskle postings the Dictionary Challenge was one of my major learing experiences. THere is nothing like spending a week-end home alone with LV, a case a beer, and a LV Challenge doing benchmarks comparing speed differences to give you a good understanding of how to maek LV go fast!
Here is an open offer!
If you can get a bunch of the contributors to come up with a good challenge I'll do the work of sponsoring the Challenge*.
Ben
E-mail me at
with a message subject of "LAbVIEW Challenge" if you want to talk off-line.
Ben
*Which means I will not be allowed to play along. 
No problem! "I must decrease so that others may increase." 
That's very generous Ben! Thank for offering to sponsor the Challenge. So we have an appeal for Challenge suggestions.
Might I suggest the first Coding Challenge: A Rubik's Cube solver
Maybe this is a little ambitious, especially if we want to see a 3D Rubik's cube on screen, spinning and circling as it solves itself, but the challenge of being presented with a muddled Rubik's cube (six patterns of 3x3 colours) and being required to perform typical Rubik's actions (spinning planes of blocks on the axis) is quite tantalising. The winner would perhaps be the code that solves the problem in the least number of moves, not necessarily the fastest.
I'd certainly want to give that a go...
Nothing wrong with a Devil's Advocate....
Both graphics and algorithms together may make the challenge a bit weighty. Perhaps a subvi could be provided (an action engine) that performs the core of the cube manoeuvres via a method call, such as "Initialise cube", "Rotate in Plane X", "...Y", "...Z" etc, such that the challenge is purely to develop a solver algorithm (with optional GUI).
The challenge ought to be about solving the cube in the shortest number of steps. If challenger was to implement a fancy animated 3D picture GUI with rotating cubes elements, this would take far longer to solve than another that simply shows the cube unfolded on the screen. Therefore one shouldn't include the 'overall solution time' as this includes the GUI updates etc.
Messy diagrams ought not be tolerated 😉
I'm not an expert, and there are already solvers out there for Rubik's Cubes, but from what I can see there are no hard rules for creating the fastest solution. There are certainly sets of 'motions' that help move one square around, but the challenge would be to optimise the use of these algorithms to create the shortest solution.
A number of fixed starting points would be required for the evaluation of each solution, as clearly each 'random' starting point will have a different solution procedure to another.
Darren - Yes, that's an interesting thread, shame it went stale. What I'm hoping for though is to get NI on board, and restart some official NI Coding Challenges.
tst - Oh yes, I see that someone has already posted a Rubik's Cube solver. Bugger. Although it's not complete, by the sound of it, it certainly takes the originality out of the idea now.
Any of the NI forum greats interesting in suggesting challenges? Altenbach? smerciurio? Dennis Knutson?
Thoric wrote:Altenbach?
Oh yes, I am all for a new challenge. Unfortunately, I am currently away, halfway around the world, in the middle of nowhere.
I would prefer if the next challenge is relatively simple to increase participation. Ben, if you get some submissions, I'd be happy to help in the selection and to fine-tune the rules to avoid silly solutions.
I have some ideas on my own, but they probably need some work first.
