26 cash prizes to be won by students with an equivalent number of introduction awards

Basingstoke – UK, 21st April 2010: Dyalog Limited, makers of the fastest growing APL development platform, Dyalog APL, is pleased to announce the launch of the 2010 World Wide Computer Programming Contest. The purpose of the contest is specifically to encourage students and others to investigate APL (A Programming Language) and it is the organisers hope that participants will find that exposure to APL broadens their horizons and tickles their fancy.

A total of US$15,000 in prize money (up from $11,500 in 2009) has been provided by several sponsors, including US-based Fiserv, Danish-based SimCorp, Italian-based APL Italiana and UK-based Dyalog Ltd., as well as several anonymous individuals and companies. The First Prize winner can look forward to $2,500 in cash plus round trip travel from ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD to the Global APL2010 Conference in Berlin, Germany, during September 13-16, 2010, where they will receive the award in person and present the work that led to winning the prize. Second and third prizes will be awarded with US$1,200 and US $600 respectively and a further 20 contestants will receive US$100 each.

The 2010 contest also introduces special Presentation Prizes, where the three best presentations of data generated while solving the main programming tasks will be awarded separately. First Prize is US$500, Second Prize is US$400 and the Third prize winner will be awarded US$300. The presentation prizes will be awarded independently of how well the actual programming tasks are solved.

Additionally, people and organisations that introduce the winning students to the contest will receive the same dollar prizes – and they need not be students to make the introduction.

The 2010 programming contest has been developed around a scenario which should appeal to any student - deciding to move into a home of their own. Prior to making a decision they need to find out if buying or renting is the better option based on a set of criteria. The job at hand is to build a model in APL and along the process solve 6 pre-defined programming tasks.

Contest participants can use either the Microsoft Windows or the Linux versions of Dyalog APL Version 12.1, or any other version of APL as long it is able to produce a UTF-8 text file containing APL source code that will load and run in Dyalog APL.

Although the contest is open to anyone (except contest organisers and employees of Dyalog Ltd.), participants should be aware that only students are eligible for the Grand Prize and they must be able to meet the criterion for a free Dyalog Educational Licence. Contestants can apply for the educational licence directly via the Dyalog website. Introduction prizes can be won by anyone.

The scoring and judging of submissions is organised and sponsored by a group of APL programmers who owe their careers - and a good deal of pleasure - to their work with the APL language.

Deadline for submission is 12:00 UTC (Noon), Sunday July 18, 2010. First, second and third prize winners will be announced on August 2, 2010, and the remaining winners, as well as the introduction award winners, will be announced during the Global APL2010 Conference which takes place in Berlin, Germany, 13-16 September, 2010.

For more information on the programming contest, rules and submission of entries, please click here.

About Dyalog
Dyalog is the world’s leading APL software-development platform. Key to Dyalog is the dynamic programming language APL - a notation which closely resembles Algebra - which is extremely well suited for expressing solutions to complex problems. Dyalog is further a complete, integrated software development platform offering all the tools and interfaces a software developer needs.

Dyalog is particularly well-suited for development of software applications where it is important to embed a high level of domain expertise. The development platform is designed to facilitate that experts, such as economists or engineers, can write software programmes themselves or work in close collaboration with a programmer to ensure, that their expert knowledge is correctly expressed.

Dyalog is heavily used in the financial sector where companies such as Denmark’s SimCorp A/S, and Italy’s APL Italiana S.p.A. use the system for their commercial financial software application development. Dyalog is further used within various engineering disciplines such as refinement of crude oil and within logistics. Other examples include: TakeCare, the integrated healthcare solution implemented in greater Stockholm Region and the Island of Gotland in Sweden, which currently has 30 000 users, from more than 1300 heath care units and holds more than 2 000 000 Patient Journals. In the UK, in less than 3 months, The Childcare Company Ltd developed and launched their online training and support solution, winning them the Nursery Management Today Innovation Award 2008.

Dyalog is developed and marketed by British-based Dyalog Ltd.

Dyalog is available for 32- and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows (Windows 2000 or later, including Windows Mobile), Linux, IBM AIX and Sun Solaris. For more information on software development using Dyalog, visit www.dyalog.com.

For further information, please contact:
John Waite / Vibeke Ulmann
Catalyst Communications
Tel: +44 (0) 845 226 3036
Fax: +44 (0) 845 226 3136
Email: john.waite@catalystpr.com / vibeke.ulmann@catalystpr.com