C4 - Developer Challenge

Dennis, our Historian and Tech Lead, posed a new challenge to our developers recently. Developer Challenges are a fun way to solve algorithm puzzles that are non work related and allow you to use languages that you may not use on a daily basis.

He built a C4 web app in javascript (http://yoc4.no.de/) and asked developers to produce an Artificial Intelligence solution in the language of their choice - to view the state of the board and determine the next best move.

Game board

The team was excited to develop a solution to a favorite childhood game.  Solutions were developed in javascript, C, python, ruby, java and a tournament was born.  The number of moves it took to win a game of C4 determined the seeding for the tournament.  3 rounds later a King was crowned. David, Yodle Tech Lead and C4 Champ, created an implementation in C that was clearly capable of thinking further ahead than any other agent.

 

I wish I had his AI solution when I was in elementary school!