On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Steve Wessels wrote:

> I have bumped into many developers that have called themselves OO,
> after working in C++ and Java, who take pride in their ability to
> develop applications quickly.  I'm usually quietly thinking that a
> team that develops software quickly does not impress me much. The team
> that then also produces "version 2" - with more features and
> capability, in a short time, does.

This reminds me of an idea I've had for a coding contest.  Most coding
contests focus on coding up a task or application once, with points given
for completeness and for speed.

A more interesting coding contest would have a second phase, with a
separate second team for each team in the first phase, who were familiar
with the language/tools the first team used, but had zero contact with the
first team (and did not know the first team).  This second team would then
be assigned a bunch of enhancements to implement using the application the
first team developed.  They would also be given points for completeness
and speed.  (Perhaps a greater weight would be given to the second team
over the first.)  This would effectively measure the readability,
understandibility, and design of the first team's application.  (The first
team would be allowed to spend any portion of their alloted time writing
design documentation, etc.)

An ever better contest would have three phases rather than two.

Have there ever been any coding contests like this?  Seems like a good
idea for a contest in which Smalltalk (and other languages/tools) is
participating.

Oddly enough, I've seen a few people express the opinion that since
prototypes can be developed so quickly and easily with Smalltalk, these
prototypes must therefore be hacks which must be difficult to
maintain.  Guess you'd need a contest like this to find out for sure. :-)

- Doug Way
  EAI/Transom Technologies, Ann Arbor, MI
  http://www.transom.com
  dway at mat.net, @eai.com