When faced with the daunting task of learning a new programming
language, it is reasonable to ask “What’s in it for me?” Why learn
Dylan, rather than focus on brushing up those Java or .NET skills?
Well, as they say, “the proof of the pudding is in the
eating”—or at least in the contest results.
The following information relates to Dylan’s performance in the
last few years of International Conference on Functional Programming
(ICFP) Contest. Despite the title, all kinds of languages are used
for these projects (ranging from Java and C all the way down to Bash
scripts!).
The following table summarizes Dylan’s performance, with each rank
linking to a more detailed analysis of the work done.
ICFP Performance
| Year | Topic | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Cops & Robbers Cops & Robbers, The Twist | Judge’s and Second Prize |
| 2004 | Dinner with Ambiants | No prize |
| 2003 | Race track path algorithm | Judge’s Prize |
| 2002 | Multi-Player Robot Game | Eliminated in Round 4 |
| 2001 | SML/NG Markup Language Optimizer | Second Place |
| 2000 | Ray Tracer | Eliminated First Round |