HHC 2018 Programming Contests

[Gene]

I'll take a whack at this.

The idea of the contest is basically something to be tried among the attendees of the conference. Ideally, this will allow a rather large percentage of the people at the conferences to try a solution.

Historically and I've been to (more or less) the last 14 conferences, the most popular, most available, most commonly usable machine-style is without a doubt...

The HP 41 style command set. The HP 41 series and perhaps the HP 42S series dominate what the attendees regularly know how to program so it gives many people a chance to reason through the problem trying to get a solution.

Second place goes to the RPL series of machines, but this is always a rather distant second. If I get 10 entries for the RPN / HP 41 style contest, we will get 3 or 4 in RPL.

The new kid on the block is the PRIME. We shall see how many try it.

The HP 71B is an amazing machine, but out of 40 people at the conference, not very many are going to try programming it as a contest machine, IMO. Does not mean it can't be done, but we try to judge ceteris paribus.

The goal is to see who comes up with a unique, fast, innovative solution using a common feature set. If speed is an issue, then you can't have the WP-34S in the mix vs. a vanilla HP-41C.

Gene

P.S. We tried a contest on the 34S one year and had less than half the entires of HP-41 style RPN.

So Valentin... NO offense meant... :-)

Here in the forum, PLEASE take a try at all of the contests. . . using the HP 71B or any other machine.