BACKPAGE John Barr, Back Page Editor Department of Computer Science Ithaca College 953 Danby Road
Ithaca, New York 14850 USA
barr@ithaca.edu
Haiku Contest Winners Illustrations by Hannah Shea, State University of New York at Fredonia
BAMBOO PHOTO: © W W W. IS TOCKPHOTO. COM/PIXHOOK DOI: 10.1145/3059008 Copyright held by authors.
Counting is too hard
I’ll write an algorithm
To count syllables
Janet Davis
Whitman College
Prince Charming’s routine
while (!footFits) try next foot
He found his true love
Chris Johnson
University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
Pedagogy
Coding 101:
Confusion deep and utter.
Welcome to CS!
My first coding class
Mysteries on mysteries.
Programming is hard!
Java, Python, C:
Equally obscure to me.
Will I ever learn?
Finally I’m there:
Writing code with style and flair.
Programming is fun!
Simon,
University of Newcastle
Tell me when potter
turns to pot, buy, and seller
object joins Maker.
A handled red jar
In green meadow witnesses
Stream drops seeking seas.
Recurring potter
assign WITTy Algorithm
With NULL to return.
O time match runner
from here to there where thy be
Open up the door.
Alireza Ebrahimi
State University of New York, Old Westbury
Honorable Mentions
A Compilation of Haiku
tokenize input?
lexical analysis:
finite automata
right token sequence?
syntactic analysis:
DFA plus stack
meaningful program?
semantic analysis:
attribute grammar
Troy Vasiga
University of Waterloo
Student Choice
With zeroes and ones
You can create infinite
Possibilities.
Martha Kosa,
Tennessee Technological University
i compile again
screen explodes with errors
semi-colons suck
Alan Rea,
Western Michigan University
omega and oh:
complex notations to prove
that quick sort is quick
David Reed
Creighton University
Geek Spirit
#include “the_flower”
in your summer reverie
soon will I return; }
the_flower
#define in main() {
#define your printf(“Summer’s glory here\n”);
#define summer printf(“long frolicking “);
#define reverie printf(“days “);
#define soon printf(“short nights \n”);
#define will printf(“fireflies “);
#define I printf(“drift by\n”);
Bruce Maxwell,
Colby College
Automata Haiku
FSAs handle
the regular languages,
like ab*c.
FSAs can’t do
a^n b^
n); can’t retain n.
PDAs handle
a^n b^
n: push a’s, pop b’s.
PDAs can’t do
equal a’s, then b’s, then c’s.
One stack’s not enough.
We’re climbing Chomsky’s
hierarchy. At the top
are Turing Machines.
David Kay
UC Irvine
Philosophers dine
Simulations work on lines
Deadlock forbidden
Martha Kosa
Tennessee Technological University
BUG
for it_lies in ’view’:
complex.real and random; float#s
(it_lies,) is not True
Keith O’Hara
Bard College
