With JavaFX 1.2 out the door and the summer almost over we thought it was high time to have another coding challenge. This time we are going to try something different. Harkening back to the demo scene of old, this month’s challenge is to build something interesting with a very small amount of code: 30 lines in a single file! I bet with liberal use of bind and recursion you’ll create something fantastic.

Here’s how it will work. We are announcing the contest today. On the 8th we will announce the secret theme so you can begin coding. This will give you a week to play around with different ways of building compact code. The deadline for entries is the 30th of September, and we will announce the winners a week later. The prize will again be a 20$ gift certificate to Amazon and a badge to put on your website.

The 30 lines will be counted by actual lines or by 3000 characters, you’re choice (please try not to have lines a 1000 columns wide You can have as many classes as you want but only one file. You can’t use any 3rd party libraries, but you can load resources (images, videos, music) from the internet. You must submit your code by pasting the 30 lines of code in an email to joshua.marinacci@sun.com with the subject: JFXStudio Challenge: Small is the New Big

That’s it. We’ll see you again on the 8th when we reveal the secret theme.

Summary:

• starts on September 8th. secret theme will be announced then.
• entries due by September 30th
• must not be more than 30 lines of code or 3000 characters (your choice).
• no 3rd party libs, but media from the internet is okay
• email your submission to joshua.marinacci@sun.com

Example

package shapeexplosion;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
import javafx.scene.*;
import javafx.scene.shape.Rectangle;
import javafx.animation.Timeline;
import javafx.scene.paint.Color;
import javafx.util.Math;
var t = 0.0; var tr = bind Math.toRadians(t);
function recurse(depth:Integer,index:Integer):Node {
    if(depth == 0) {
        return  Rectangle {
            width: bind (Math.sin(tr*5)+1)*100 height: bind (Math.sin(tr*3)+2)*100
            fill: bind Color.hsb(t/3*index,1.0,1.0,0.7)
            rotate: bind -t*5
        }
    }
    return Group {
        rotate: bind t
        content: for(i in [0..2]) {
            var node = recurse(depth-1,i);
            node.translateX= 60*i;
            node.translateY= 60*i;
            node;
        } }
}
Stage { width: 500 height: 500 scene: Scene { content: recurse(3,0) fill: Color.BLACK} };
Timeline { repeatCount: Timeline.INDEFINITE
    keyFrames: [ at(0s) { t => 0.0 } at(12s) { t => 360.0*3 } ] }.play();

Run the example