Remember our utility programming contest? Find out what the three finalists accomplished—and who won the grand prize.
For several weeks, we collected entries in our programming utility challenge. The judges had lots of discussions, late into the night, about which of the entries was best. Here are the finalists, each of whom gets a WayCool Spot watch:
Finalist #1: Wayne Hubbard, for his phone list utility.
This program lets you create and maintain a handy electronic phone book. You can keep names, numbers, and other important bits of information about people (or companies!), and retrieve them easily with one keyword.
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Finalist #2: William Powell, for Spin'Em.
You can buy CD, DVD, floppy and zip drive cleaners—but how do you get them to spin around so they actually clean the drive? Drop to a DOS box and type dir a bunch of times. How 1980s! Spin'Em provides a list of removable drives and lets the user select the drive and a 30, 45, or 60 second spin.)
Finalist #3: David F Wilson's GetData.
GetData is designed for a console application where valid data entry is a requirement. The functions are methods in a C++ class called GetData; they allow the programmer to enter all primitives, signed and unsigned, strings, and dates. Over/underflow is detected for integers. An invalid entry is merely erased and the cursor is returned to the beginning.
And the grand prize goes to (the envelope please...) William Powell, for Spin'Em. William Powell will attend the VSLive conference in New York City, including airfare and hotel.
