Mandelbrot Fractals Programming Contest from Apress

Overview:
Write a program in your favorite language using a standard graphics library for Linux or Windows that can speedily produce a series of Mandelbrot fractals (Z=Z²+C). The coloring schema you choose is up to you; but at least 32 colors must be used.

Apress will award prizes prizes for the fastest program in each of the three language groups: C and C++; Perl, Python, PHP, and Common LISP; and C#, Java, and VB.NET. The creator of the overall fastest fractal generator from any of the qualifyng languages groups will win the grand prize: a Sony PSP. And the creators of the next fastest fractal generators in the other two remaining language groups will each win an iPod Shuffle.

More info: http://www.apress.com/promo/fractal/

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Comment on Mandelbrot Fractals Programming Contest from Apress

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Re: Mandelbrot Fractals Programming Contest from Apress by merlyn (Sage) on Jul 13, 2005 at 11:33 UTC
While searching, I found a note on speedy mandelbrot calculations interesting. Can the Perl solutions use Inline::C? {grin} Can the Perl solutions use Image::Magick? -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.	[reply]
Re: Mandelbrot Fractals Programming Contest from Apress by Anonymous Monk on Jul 13, 2005 at 15:22 UTC
Ouch. Perl has to compete against Common Lisp for a number crunching exercise? That's going to make it tough. Plus the test seems way under specified. They don't mention how many iterations to run the algorithm. They don't mention if compile times are included ('cause you could certainly create a common lisp macro to do all the work at compile time). Oh, and you can pretty much guarentee that C will win the grand prize. Or am I misreading it? Are there three grand prizes? Overall the contest seems like quite a mess.	[reply]
Re^2: Mandelbrot Fractals Programming Contest from Apress by Anonymous Monk on Jul 25, 2005 at 00:27 UTC
It gets worse. Just take a look at the sample input file. Many regions don't even include the set and the fourth one in the file fails (assert (and (< left right) (< bottom top))). Mess is an understatement. I hope their real file is better, but this doesn't address the issue of how to deal with bogus data.	[reply]
Re: Mandelbrot Fractals Programming Contest from Apress by crenz (Priest) on Jul 13, 2005 at 11:01 UTC
Promotion is open to persons in the US and Canada. sigh	[reply]
Re: Mandelbrot Fractals Programming Contest from Apress by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Jul 13, 2005 at 12:41 UTC
If anyone is interested there is an example (and highly unoptimized) Mandelbrot generator in the distribution of Linux::Svgalib - if you do get it to go faster then patches will be happily accepted. /J\	[reply]