One of the thrilling challenges accessible to any software program developer is that of writing brilliantly working code that’s so obtuse, so indecipherable, and opaque, that even its personal creator would wrestle to understand its inside workings after returning to it a yr later. Whereas for some that is simply how they naturally write code, for others it’s a part of the Worldwide Obfuscated C Coding Problem (IOCCC), with 2025’s entrants once again showing their mettle.
The IOCCC judges entries amongst a spread of classes, as it may be arduous to in any other case quantify what’s the ‘finest’ entry, with ground rules limiting what the entry can entail. Usually so long as your code adheres to the C11 customary with a supply dimension of 4,993 bytes or much less and closing binary dimension of beneath 2,503, is accompanied by a GNU-style Makefile and doesn’t flip a decide’s pc right into a raging inferno — it ought to qualify.
Among the many profitable entries we obtained enjoyable ones like ‘Most likely to shock’ by [Yusuke Endoh] which generates a Lichtenberg determine in ASCII within the terminal. There are additionally fairly sensible ones, such because the ‘Finest actual emulator’ winner by [Nick Craig-Wood], whose entry is a practical Recreation Boy emulator. Though not full-featured, it might probably play a spread of actual GB ROMs, simply don’t anticipate to get any sounds or fancy terminal-based graphics.