Functional Strategies in AI Game Bots - "One weird FP trick that made us rich!"

Update 19 September 2018:
Due to popular demand we're shifting this event to the ground floor of 138 West Str (it's usually on the 3rd floor). We've booked the Workshop17 auditorium - https://workshop17.co.za/sandton/

A number of Luminaries and Jemstep employees have entered the Entelect Challenge 2018 to compete for fame and fortune by writing an AI game bot.
And overall they have done very well.

Four of our members will expose the dirty secrets of their success at this meetup.

Justin Worthe used Rust:
https://www.offerzen.com/blog/coding-for-the-win-how-i-built-a-tower-defence-bot

Louis Lotter used Java. We don't know how functional his code is, but based on his scores it isn't dysfunctional.

Edward Steere used Haskell.

Henry Steere started out with Common Lisp, and then pivoted to C++.

Update (15 September 2018):
The final bot-battle happened on the main stage at comic-con, and the final results for our speakers above are:
First Place - Louis Lotter
Second Place - Edward Steere
Third Place - Justin Worthe
9th Place (just 1 place short of going to the finals) - Henry Steere

Congratulations to everyone!

Have a look at how they did in each of the tournaments:

https://challenge.entelect.co.za/tournaments
https://challenge.entelect.co.za/tournaments/codename-renegade
https://challenge.entelect.co.za/tournaments/operation-firestorm
https://challenge.entelect.co.za/tournaments/countdown-to-zero-hour

Agenda:

• 5:45pm ~ 6:15pm: drinks and snacks to keep us functional
• 6:15pm: talk
• 8pm: lights out