I am one of the guest judges for the Scripting Games 2010 occurring right now at and http://blogs.technet.com/heyscriptingguy/. I am currently working on the Beginner Event 4 which asks the user to read the Environment Variables to get the number of processors in the machine.

This evening I am finding myself in constant conflict with my own principals as I grade these entries. In accordance with the spirit of the Scripting Games, I am grading the entries based on those guidelines including “Anything that goes beyond the bare minimum requirements of the scenario”, but it is taking all of my strength not to give them one star and write, “Dude, you know you can do that with one line.” These are games after all, so maybe I can convince the Scripting Guys next year to do the “2011 Scripting Reality Challenges”. What do you think?

Yours truly,

Mark