23 cash prizes to be won by students with an equivalent number of referral awards

Bramley – UK, 13th March 2012: Dyalog Limited, which markets Dyalog APL - the most commonly used dialect of the APL programming language throughout the world - announces the launch of their 2012 World Wide Computer Programming Contest.

The purpose of the contest - now in its fourth year – is to encourage students and others to investigate APL (A Programming Language); the organisers hope that participants will find that exposure to APL broadens their horizons and adds a new tool to their toolbox. A fully featured copy of the latest release of Dyalog APL is available free of charge to students, whether or not they wish to participate in the contest.

Students of disciplines other than Computer Science are encouraged to participate: Many of the most successful APL users have backgrounds in other sciences, and have found APL to be a “Tool of Thought” for expressing solutions to problems in a wide variety of fields.

A total of US$12,600 in prize money has been provided by several sponsors, including US-based Fiserv, Italy-based APL Italiana, Denmark-based SimCorp and UK-based Dyalog Ltd., as well as several anonymous individuals and companies. The Grand Prize winner can look forward to US$2,500 plus round trip travel to the Dyalog '12 Conference in Elsinore, Denmark, commencing Sunday, October 14, 2012, where they will receive the award in person and present the work that led to winning the prize. Second and third prize winners will be awarded US$1,200 and US$600 respectively and a further 20 contestants will receive US$100 each. Additionally, people or organisations who introduce the winning students to the contest will receive the same dollar prizes – they need not be students to make the introduction.

The scoring and judging of submissions is organised and sponsored by a group APL programmers who have made their careers - and gained a great deal of pleasure - working with the APL language.

Contest participants can either use the Microsoft Windows or the Linux versions of Dyalog APL, or any other version of APL as long as it is converted to the Dyalog APL platform. Tools are provided on the contest website for interchange format conversion.

The contest is open to anyone except contest organisers and employees of Dyalog Ltd., but participants should be aware that only students who meet the criterion for a free Dyalog Educational Licence are eligible for the Grand Prize. Students can apply for an Educational Licence directly via the Dyalog website. Prizes for referring a winning entrant can be won by anyone.

The deadline for submission is 12:00 UTC (Noon), Sunday, August 5, 2012. Grand, second and third prize winners will be announced on August 13, 2012, and the remaining winners, as well as the referral prize winners, will be announced during Dyalog ’12 in Elsinore.

More information on the programming contest rules and submission of entries can be found at the Dyalog website [www.dyalog.com/contest_2012/index.html].

About Dyalog
Dyalog is the world’s leading APL software-development platform. APL is a dynamic programming language - a notation which closely resembles Algebra - which is extremely well suited for expressing solutions to complex problems. Dyalog APL is 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: in Sweden, a small system developed by a nurse and a programmer has now grown into Sweden’s largest Patient Record Solution; in the UK, The Childcare Company Ltd developed and launched their online training and support solution in under 3 months, winning them the Nursery Management Today Innovation Award 2008.

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

Dyalog is available on the following platforms: Microsoft Windows (XP and later, 2000 and later and Windows Mobile 5 and 6), AIX, Linux and 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