TITLE: Following Through: A Contest Rewarding Epic Failure
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 27, 2011  8:08 PM
DESC: 
-----
BODY:
As promised
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2011-05.html#e2011-05-06T17_12_31.htm">
   back in May</A>,
I am offering a prize for the best failed idea of the semester
in the my programming languages course.  We are now about
halfway through the second unit of the course, on recursive
programming techniques.  Students finally have tools powerful
enough to solve interesting problems, but also tools powerful
enough to go spectacularly astray.  I want to encourage students
to trust their ideas enough to fail, but that's how they will
learn to trust their ideas enough to succeed.  Rather than fear
those inevitable failures, we will have fun with them.

Feel free to check out
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/teaching/cs3540/failure.html"
   the course web page</A>
describing the contest and how to participate.  As always, I
<A HREF="mailto:wallingf@cs.uni.edu">
   welcome feedback</A>
from my readers.

In particular, I am still looking for a catchy, evocative,
culturally relevant, funny name for the prize.  If this were
the late 1980s or early 1990s, I might name it for the film
<A HREF="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093278/">
   Ishtar</A>,
and everyone would know what I meant.  For now, I have opted
for a more recent high-profile film flop -- a spectacular loser
on the balance sheet -- but it doesn't have the same pop for
me.  I'm not as hip as I used to be and can use some help.
-----