News Archive

Aug 23, 2011

Dyalog is pleased to announce the winners of the World Wide Programming Competition 2011 as follows:

Grand Prize Winner:
Joel Hough
The University of Utah, Utah, USA

2nd Prize Winner:
Yanqing Chen
Stony Brook University, New York, USA

3rd Prize Winner:
Elliot Way
Binghamton University, New York, USA

The Judges’ motivation on selecting Joel Hough’s submission as the Grand Prize winner reads as follows:

"Joel is studying Computer Science and is a returning contestant, having been placed 3rd in last year’s competition.  One of Joel’s stated goals was to find 'APL-like' solutions and he succeeded admirably. Most of his work demonstrated solid insight into the problems combined with an array-oriented approach. Several of Joel's solutions ran orders of magnitude faster than those of his fellow competitors. For his efforts, Joel will receive a trip to the Dyalog '11 User Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, in addition to the cash prize."

The Judges’ motivation on selecting the 2nd and 3rd Prize winners reads as follows:

"Yanqing is a first year PhD student in theoretical computer science. Despite learning of the contest late, Yanqing made an impressive showing. Yanqing motivated his submission as follows - even with only little time to play with Dyalog APL, I found it really powerful. It's amazing when solving a problem with only several lines! By attending the contest, I got some basic skills and I thought there should be much more worthy to be discovered in the world of APL.”

"Elliot is a second year student studying computer science. He produced correct solutions to all of the tasks outlined in the contest including one of the better solutions to the 'patFind' task in Problem 2. Elliot’s work demonstrated good effort, both in his analysis of the problems and his implementation of his solutions."

Please check back soon to see a more comprehensive presentation of the winners.

Winners of the consolation prizes will be announced at the Dyalog '11 Conference in Boston Massachusetts Oct 2- 5 2011 and they will be notified directly via e-mail immediately after.

Dyalog and the sponsors would like to thank all of those who participated in the 2011 Programming contest. We would like to encourage you to check back in early Spring of 2012 as we plan to run another contest next year. Meanwhile, if you're a student, you can download an educational license for Dyalog already now and start familiarising yourself with the APL programming language.

You can also find PDF documentation free for download from