Questions about acceptable libraries and programming languages -- READ BEFORE ASKING

Questions about acceptable libraries and programming languages -- READ BEFORE ASKING

bart's picture

We're getting a lot of questions about what libraries and programming languages are acceptable for LPC.  I'd like to be able to answer those questions, but a lot of them are way too broad and phrased in the form of hypotheticals.  Given how many different languages, compilers, and libraries are out there, we cannot make an exhaustive list of precisely whic combinations are acceptable and which ones are not.

As such, if you have a question about what will make an acceptable contest entry, please supply the following information:

  • The programming language or platform you will be using
  • The libraries you will be using
  • Any compilers or other programs that are necessary to turn your source into an executable and run it.

Just to get a couple of common questions out of the way:

While ActionScript (Flash, gnash, AIR, etc) and Mono (.NET, etc) may be legal in some circumstances, we strongly advise against using these particular technologies, as they may affect your score.

Furthermore, we strongly advise making sure that it is not necessary to use an 'emulation' layer such as Wine to compile and run your program.  Again, situations may exist where this is technically okay, but the judges aren't likely to feel good about it. :)

If you're using Java, just make sure your code runs on a non-proprietary VM.  OpenJDK is a safe choice.

If you're using something that compiles code to Javascript, bear in mind that we need to be able to do this from the original source using only Free software.

In short:  In order for an entry to be legal, we must be able to take the original source, then compile and run it using nothing but free software, from the operating system up.

We realize that software licensing can be a confusing issue, and the idea isn't to take anyone by surprise.  If you have questions about specific languages and libraries, please ask them here and we will address them.

Thanks!

Bart