What language should I use for a single language KOTH?

Question

I'm working on a KOTH contest, and it is a little bit more on the complicated side. Each bot is expected to keep track of a lot of state. For example, move history, position in the board, position of other bots, etc.

It seems to me like the best way to do this would be to make each bot an instance of a class, rather than a full program communicating over command line arguments.

However, I'm worried about this since, by nature, this would restricts all entrants to a single language. Is this okay? And I go through with restricting it to a single language, what language is most appropriate? I'd like to do it in Java since it's very widespread and pretty easy to get started with. If I restrict it to Java, will that hurt participation on a technical or social aspect? E.g, "I'd like to participate, but I really want to do it in <language>"

Or If I instead allow persistent program that communicate over a pipe, will this make it too technically hard to implement that it will hurt participation?

Answer 1

Use whatever you're comfortable with...

...but make sure it's a moderately-well-known language to encourage more submissions from more people.

Here is a (not exhaustive, in no particular order) list of languages I personally would consider to be good choices for a single-language King of the Hill challenge:

• Java
• Python
• C++
• JavaScript
• C#

Ultimately, since you'll be writing the controller code, the language choice is up to you.

Answer 2

JavaScript

• JavaScript is known by a majority of Developers according to the SO survey.
• It has (pseudo) classes, like this:

function MyBot(action){
  this.action = action;
  this.moves = [];
}
var bot = new MyBot(function(){return "LRD";});

• You can do it online, where most everyone who would want to participate is.
• It's similar to many langs in terms of syntax (C-like), and is far simpler to use, being a scripting language.
• (BONUS: You can emulate Python with it.)

Why not JavaScript?

• If you need to have long-running programs (e.g. long-lasting while loops), DO NOT use JavaScript, as it stalls the webpage. (Or use node, though I confess I don't know much about it.)
• If you need more math stuff, use another lang with libraries. JS has some nice math functions, but will make you implement stuff like primality and otherstuff.
• IF you need speed, there are other languages more suited for that purpose..

Answer 3

Java

I wrote this answer under the assumption that there exists a good reason for limiting a challenge to only one language.

Popularity: In 2014, an overwhelming majority of universities use Java or Python as the tool of choice for teaching introduction to programming. More recently, the 2016 developer survey showed that JavaScript was the most popular language among front-end and back-end developers, with Python being more popular with Math and Data folks, and Java being the most well-known among students.

Performance: Of those three languages, Java is usually the fastest (when compared using each languages most widely used runtime environment). See here for a more direct comparison of Java and Python. See here for a direct comparison of JavaScript and Java.

If the goal is to optimize both performance and ease of participation, then Java is the correct choice.