Mark suggests:
> What about some kind of "System Building" competition to build a
> small-scale online application from scratch using a standard set of
> tools or whatever. Work from a standard spec with three teams..
>
> The HP3000 MPE/iX team
> The UNIX team (HP9000 HP-UX)
> The i386 team (Windows NT)

The problem is that for the 3000 to win you'd have to have a way of
judging the quality and stability of the resulting application rather
than just its functionality.  You can probably slap together just about
any application quicker on UNIX or NT, but you'll get something that is
a monster to maintain.

There actually is an annual programming competition that works just
like this.  They come up with a specification for an application of
some kind and teams have something like two days to implement it.  The
whole thing is done for the benefit of some nonprofit organization
who gets to use the resulting software.  The competition is usually
won by using one of a couple of rapid application development tools
(that don't exist on the 3000 by the way) that are designed specifically
for this kind of development.  Some of these tools apparently make even
something like Cognos look like assembly coding in comparison.

Can't find their URL off hand.

G.