[vox] ACM programming contest

[Bill Broadley]

On 11/10/2010 08:18 PM, Tony Cratz wrote:
> 	Well I can suggest a contest, a replacement for Procmail. Keep
> 	all of the features.

So then you get, er, procmail.  With all the issues I.e. unusable on any
sane mail server that doesn't trust their users.

I don't think designing a new syntax for a work alike procmail is
particularly fun or useful.  I'm sure blackhats would love it if a
procmail work alike got popular so they could DoS, remote exploit, or
turn a mail server into a spambot.

While procmail is a cool tool that I keep around for certain uses, I
think the more generally useful and better designed tool would be sieve.
 Even with sieve writing a new syntax (which IMO is much better than
procmail's) seems perilously like work.  If you want more info on Sieve
check out RFC5228.

> The winner would be the program which has
> 	all of the features, an easy to understand filter rules and
> 	good man page documentation.

While writing a domain specific language is an admirable goal, I'd hope
to find something more fun to do with one.  Maybe write a "smart agent"
that can monitor RSS feeds and use whatever APIs are available for
monitoring social networks for facebook, buzz, ebay, foursquare, home
automation, and friends.  Something like:

if_all_of_list:
    user.relationship >= friend
    user.messages contains lunch
    distance_from_me(user.position)<One_Mile
    my_calendar_free(today.lunch)
    current_time()<today.lunch
Then:
    notify(user.IM,message="Hey lunch downtown?)
    notify(me.IM,message="Lunch with "+user.fullname+"?")

Other use cases:
* If friend sells/offers something from my wishlist express interest
* If friend and I have a status mentioning bordem look for match in
  interests
* Search friends for open schedule and a match in movies I'd like to see
* search friends_library for book_I'd_like_to_read

Scoring would be made by clarity of syntax, flexibility, API for
plugins, and documentation.  Winner must promise to submit it for RFC
and in return gets to brag about winning.