What development competitions are running annually/generally for CPC?

[Puresox]

As it says in the headline basically. Was interested to know who runs them etc.

[Puresox]

Wow that many!?
Was intrigued cos of the vid of those entries ,which seemed 90% abysmal and the rest pretty darn fine . Made me wonder if it was via a University or european equivalence. Not sure if they were programmed by people interested in the machine or whether they were forced to produce them? Anyhow looks like I'll just wonder away.

[Nich]

Wow that many!?
Was intrigued cos of the vid of those entries ,which seemed 90% abysmal and the rest pretty darn fine . Made me wonder if it was via a University or european equivalence. Not sure if they were programmed by people interested in the machine or whether they were forced to produce them? Anyhow looks like I'll just wonder away.

I believe the #CPCRetroDev contest is organised by the University of Alicante, and most of the entries are developed by students as part of their degree course - which explains their relatively low quality. Obviously they don't know the ins and outs of the CPC anywhere near as well as the people who developed the higher-placed entries.

I think it's a good idea to teach students some CPC programming to show them how to program more efficiently with very limited hardware, and to get an understanding of what's it like to program 'close to the metal'.

@ronaldo can offer a much better explanation than me, though.

[Puresox]

Thanks Nich.  I think that is a great way to learn programming . Having restricting parameters surely must push innovation skills.   I think the more I pick up about the machine , the more tempted I am to begin learning how to programme the CPC.   Really feel the mystique of programming becoming ever more closer to grasping the process .
What Basic commands would you say are the most useful and key ? Would it be the use of the different Gates? And/If/ not etc...?

[Nich]

What Basic commands would you say are the most useful and key ? Would it be the use of the different Gates? And/If/ not etc...?

I learnt BASIC by typing in listings from magazines like Amstrad Computer User and Amstrad Action and studying how they worked. It's difficult to say what commands are the most useful, but IF and operators like AND and OR are used a lot in all types of programming, not just BASIC.

[AMSDOS]

This site was running a 10 Liners BASIC contest the past 2 years for any 8bit system, don't know if they are running it again this year, I found this German Atari Forum which are running what appears to be a contest for the Best logo.