It’s about time for another Golden Lunch Bucket Contest, and once again you can reap fame and fortune! (And again, we’ll provide the former if you provide the latter. This time, though, we must insist that you provide better prizes for yourself if you’re one of the winners!)
If you’re feeling lucky, then enter the contest. Who knows? You might just win, and then you can go nuts! We know, you’ll have to put up with the paparazzi and the inevitable groupies, but that’s just the cost of fame. (Our former winners will give you advice on how to handle it all.) Just remember Dirty Harry’s advice:
You gotta ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
What is it?
In more than one post by design pattern enthusiasts, I’ve seen warnings against Design Pattern Fever with dire warnings about using design patterns for petty projects. Well, I don’t agree! From our survey, we found that while most would like to include good OOP and design patterns in their projects at work, most good programmers are under so much pressure to get the job done that they don’t have time for design patterns. So instead of kick-starting your design pattern work with a big project, start small with a Hello World! project.
The goal is to use a design pattern (any one you want except the Singleton) to output “Hello world!” in eight (8) different languages. In our last contest, we had winners from all over the world, and so having more than one language seems appropriate. (You get bonus points if one of the languages is Icelandic, Yoruba or Navaho.) The contest is from when you read this post until July 15, 2009. So get cracking and get lucky!
The Rules
- You must use a Design Pattern from the original Gang of Four’s book
- All entries must use ActionScript 3.0
- Either Flash or Flex formats are acceptable
- You may not use a Singleton design pattern (They’re pathological liars—that’s why.)
- The screen output must show “Hello World” in eight (8) languages—either separately or all together. You cannot use trace() statements for the output, but all output must be visible on the screen.
- You must specify which design pattern(s) you are using.
- Extra points are given for Icelandic, Yoruba and Navaho
- All entries must be in by July 15, 2009
- All entries must be placed in a ZIP file. (Nothing fancy for my Mac)
- Send entries to wdsanders@comcast.net with the subject line Golden Lunch Bucket Contest #2
- Include your name, age, where you’re from, and a 100 x 100 jpeg/png photo
Remember, you can use any design pattern you want with the exception of the Singleton (shudder). This is a simple contest, and there’s no pressure—you’ve got until July 15! So grab that can of Red Bull and hop to it!
The Hello World! : The Second Golden Lunch Bucket Contest! by William B. Sanders, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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Bill Sanders
why are you argueing about Singleton ? PureMVC uses it as a fundament. Sure, you can use it wrongly but I do not see the big problem.
Hi Mark,
PureMVC and Carnigorm both use the Singleton as part of a framework, and as such it may have some value. However, I don’t trust it, and I see no reason to use it. Take a look at Miško Hevery’s post on the subject and an earlier post on this blog concerning the Singleton.
I’m really not looking for an argument in our contest, but at best the Singleton only provides a single entry point and at worst it functions as a global variable. So, it wouldn’t be very appropriate anyway. Even Erich Gamma commented that he wished they hadn’t included it in Design Patterns. Please don’t let this one little thing hold you back from the contest!
Kindest regards,
Bill
Do you want the “hello world!” to be displayed using the language’s own alphabet too?
Hi Steph,
If you can, yes. If there’s no font available; then you can’t. Don’t let the alphabet stop you!
Take care,
Bill