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Last updated:14 August 2025 (complete changelog since 6 August 2025)

On 02 August 2025 I discovered that once again I have won two entries in the IOCCC - this time IOCCC28, which opened late 2024 (the 40th year anniversary of the contest!).

This year, though, the judges not only no longer use twitter but they also did not post anything on mastodon (which they do use). Instead they published a video describing each entry on their YouTube channel 'Our Favorite Universe'. As I now have FTTH I can share the extracted sections of the video. That will be done on in each entry's page, although I might eventually upload it to YouTube (the judges actually plan on having a video for each entry too).

What awards did I win? Well:

The diabolical logistics is not just because of the game (it is hardly an Oregon Trail - it's merely inspired by it) but because of how hard it is to trace. It has 134 gotos, smashing the IOCCC record of 24 in 1987 (when the judges said goto had 'reached its logical conclusion') by an astonishing 100 gotos! But that and more on the subject of gotos (including the alt version I made which has 149 gotos) and the diabolical reference is for the entry is on its own page.

The other one translates to Prize in code, a fun one for sure. This is my second contest in a row winning a Second World War cipher, a fitting thing due to my fascination with the era for decades!

General thoughts (New: 06 Aug 2025)

Whereas my two winning entries have their own subdirectory here I have general comments about my entries and the contest itself.

This year the IOCCC had a record number of high quality submissions, resulting in breaking the previous number of winners record of 15 at 23! This is very possibly because most people had almost five years to work on their entries. I did not.

I did not because the past several years I have helped the judges. With the exception of Anthony C Howe's iocccsize tool: I have either written or co-developed every tool (and our JSON parser jparse) in the IOCCC mkiocccentry toolkit! This really belongs in another directory but the point is that I had very little time so the fact I won two again is something I am very thankful for.

When I heard that they had a record number of finalists I was horrified. That's because of what else I had done. The judges had so many amazing entries they did not even come up with a Best of Show - a real disappointment. But still - I am in the guidelines, the credits and the fact I had only a few months (and two of those months were working on the Oregon Trail parody) and everyone else had years and I still had standout submissions is something to be proud of.

I am sure that some of my submissions competed against each other and I know for certain one did - two versions of the same program, the Oregon Trail parody. I will simply have to try next time (December is the expected time) and this time people won't have nearly as much time and I hope to have more time than I did this last time. I doubt I'll get Best of Show but that is a goal of mine, as is breaking my personal record.

In any case this contest resulted in my fourth and fifth win and I am quite proud of it, obviously. The Oregon Trail parody was a true labour of love: I poured my heart and (figurative) soul into it and I had only hours left when I finished it. When I say it took two months to complete I mean it took two months to complete - to the day. I also did have to help with the toolkit even after the contest opened! So I had less time in that way too.

The judges comments on some of the entries

Of course the judges also have comments about some of the entries and one of my entries happens to be mentioned: the Prize in yil-tas one. They had this to say:

2024/ferguson2 - The 'Prize in yil-tas' provides a hint as to what this marvelous winning entry is doing, provided that you are someone familiar in at least 3 languages (hint: One of them is C, another is English).

The IOCCC is honored to present this entry for your enjoyment and for you to ponder the prog.c source code.

They also added this, meant for the guidelines in the future:

Remarks on some of submissions that did not win

Using a lot of goto statements to make your code harder to understand might not help it pass the final rounds of judging.

I asked Landon about this: did he mean it to be in the future guidelines? He told me that it was something that Leo wanted in as a reminder for the next guidelines. I was told that although gotos will not be outright banned they will not hold nearly as much value as they used to, because of what I did. See my Prize in diabolical logistics entry for more details on that! In fact when I made a correction of the judges - they said 130 gotos, it was actually 134 (and I submitted a version of 149 as alt code today, to max it out, still fitting in the size rule) - Landon said one might say that the amount of gotos is almost limitless.

This is the third time in a row (2018, 2020, 2024) that something I did changed the next contest in some way or another (though not as much as my work on the toolkit and website - as Anthony C Howe said some months back, and as Landon has acknowledged as well, the contest would not be where it is without the help I provided) which is a huge honour, especially as those are the times I won (a lot of 2018 was rough and I did not think I would participate in 2019 - I did but I did not win yet the guidelines were changed because of my 2018 entry so I felt like I won twice for the same entry).