Happy 25th Birthday Core War

When David Jones and A. K. Dewdney produced their Core War Guidelines in March 1984, they could hardly have imagined the success it would achieve. Core War is still going strong 25 years later and I'd like to wish everyone in the Core War community a very happy birthday.

Core War, a Short History:

Shortly after the guidelines were complete, an article in Dewdney's Computer Recreations column in Scientific American introduce the world to Core War. The wheels on the Core War machine had been put in motion.

The following year the ICWS was formed to standardise and promote Core War, with Mark Clarkson as director. The ICWS published The Core Wars Standard and organised the First International Core War Tournament at the Computer Museum in Boston, Mass.

William R. Buckley began publication of The Core War Newsletter in early 1987, providing a forum for Core War players. Early issues covered what we now consider the basic techniques of Core War. Later issues discussed advance topics, for example the holy grail of Core War: self-repairing programs.

Core War, 25 Years On:

Fast forward to 2009. Dozens of players are competing on the Core War hills and the possibilities seem endless. I can't help wondering what a Core War player from 1984 would make of our battle programs, or if they ever imagined how we'd be creating them 25 years later. Computer optimized constants and evolved code are the order of the day.

The ICWS has fallen by the wayside, as has TCWN. However, a number of irregular Core War journals have florished and the online Core War community organise the occasional tournament as an alternative to competing on the hill.

Let's hope Core War is still going strong in 2034, to celebrate it's 50th birthday! :-)

More About Core War:

Here are the top resources to discover more about Core War:

• Beginner's Guide to Redcode covers the basics of Redcode, the language of Core War
• pMARS is a portable Core War virtual machine, implemented in C
• The Core War Bibliography lists tutorials covering almost every aspect of Core War
• KOTH.org and KOTH@SAL organise the King of the Hill tournaments, played by email
• Koenigstuhl is a huge archive of published Core War battle programs
• #corewars is the Core War IRC channel, hosted on irc.freenode.net