Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
International Obfuscated C Code Contest
The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (abbreviated IOCCC) is a computer programming contest for code written in C that is the most creatively obfuscated and held annually (when possible). It is described as "celebrating C's syntactical opaqueness". The winning code for the 28th contest, held in 2024/25, was announced by live stream 2 Aug 2025 in addition video segments for each of the 23 winners.
Entries are evaluated anonymously by the current sitting judges, Leonid A. Broukhis & Landon Curt Noll. The judging process is documented in the competition guidelines and consists of elimination rounds. By tradition, no information is given about the total number of entries for each competition. Winning entries are awarded with a category, such as "Worst Abuse of the C preprocessor" or "Most Erratic Behavior", and then announced on the official IOCCC website. The contest states that being announced on the IOCCC website is the reward for winning (plus bragging rights).
Previous contests were held in the years 1984–1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004–2006, 2011–2015, 2018–2020, and 2024.
The IOCCC was started by Landon Curt Noll and Larry Bassel in 1984 while employed at National Semiconductor's Genix porting group. The idea for the contest came after they compared notes with each other about some poorly written code that they had to fix, notably the Bourne shell, which used macros to emulate ALGOL 68 syntax, and a buggy version of finger for BSD. The contest itself was the topic of a quiz question in the 1993 Computer Bowl. After a hiatus of five years starting in 2006, the contest returned in 2011.
Compared with other programming contests, the IOCCC is described as "not all that serious" by Michael Swaine, editor of Dr. Dobb's Journal..
In Don Libes' book says:
...they will undoubtedly force you to expand your own mind when you study them. And admittedly, some are just downright insane and only good for laughing at and making fun of.
The Rules vary from year to year and are posted with a set of Guidelines that attempt to convey additional enlightenment about the Rules. They are published on the IOCCC website. In addition all material including winning entries are published under Creative Commons license BY-SA 4.0 International..
Hub AI
International Obfuscated C Code Contest AI simulator
(@International Obfuscated C Code Contest_simulator)
International Obfuscated C Code Contest
The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (abbreviated IOCCC) is a computer programming contest for code written in C that is the most creatively obfuscated and held annually (when possible). It is described as "celebrating C's syntactical opaqueness". The winning code for the 28th contest, held in 2024/25, was announced by live stream 2 Aug 2025 in addition video segments for each of the 23 winners.
Entries are evaluated anonymously by the current sitting judges, Leonid A. Broukhis & Landon Curt Noll. The judging process is documented in the competition guidelines and consists of elimination rounds. By tradition, no information is given about the total number of entries for each competition. Winning entries are awarded with a category, such as "Worst Abuse of the C preprocessor" or "Most Erratic Behavior", and then announced on the official IOCCC website. The contest states that being announced on the IOCCC website is the reward for winning (plus bragging rights).
Previous contests were held in the years 1984–1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004–2006, 2011–2015, 2018–2020, and 2024.
The IOCCC was started by Landon Curt Noll and Larry Bassel in 1984 while employed at National Semiconductor's Genix porting group. The idea for the contest came after they compared notes with each other about some poorly written code that they had to fix, notably the Bourne shell, which used macros to emulate ALGOL 68 syntax, and a buggy version of finger for BSD. The contest itself was the topic of a quiz question in the 1993 Computer Bowl. After a hiatus of five years starting in 2006, the contest returned in 2011.
Compared with other programming contests, the IOCCC is described as "not all that serious" by Michael Swaine, editor of Dr. Dobb's Journal..
In Don Libes' book says:
...they will undoubtedly force you to expand your own mind when you study them. And admittedly, some are just downright insane and only good for laughing at and making fun of.
The Rules vary from year to year and are posted with a set of Guidelines that attempt to convey additional enlightenment about the Rules. They are published on the IOCCC website. In addition all material including winning entries are published under Creative Commons license BY-SA 4.0 International..