Awards for the fourth Stack Overflow code challenge:
Most Upvotes: Davide Fiocco
Vision Architect: 12Kittens
New Contributor: Prakhar Agarwal
All of the awards given (aside from most upvotes) are subjective - Stack Overflow developers had a lot of fun reading through everyone's work and recognizing the entries that stood out.
Update on July 22, 2025: This challenge is now closed! Entries can still be posted and votes can still be cast, but they will not count towards determining the winners of the challenge. Winners will be announced soon.
Thanks for coming back for the fourth Stack Overflow code challenge, and welcome to those who are new. This challenge is three weeks long.
For more context on what this is and why we’re doing it, you can check out this post on Stack Overflow Meta. If you have feedback on the challenge itself, that’s the place to send it!
The Challenge
Science fiction inspires us with visions of futuristic technologies like matter replicators, interplanetary tourism, mixed reality spaces and more. While some of these still seem like fantasy, others might be available in the near future.
In this challenge, we want to see if you can bring the future into the present. Can you create a futuristic technology? Or even a portion of it?
For example, you could focus on smart home technology. In the future, perhaps your home would automatically make food for you. In this challenge, you could create a food prediction software that would know what kind of food you’d like to eat.
As another example, creating an immersive 3D room experience (inspired by something like the Holodeck from Star Trek) might require a user interface to allow participants to choose an experience. How might that interaction work? What options would it provide, and how would their choices be reflected in a scenario’s creation?
Consider what role Artificial Intelligence might play in your tech. Perhaps it can help you with the challenge. This challenge is open-ended, and you can take any aspect of a future technology that appeals to you. Note: this should specifically be something that does not exist yet in the real world. You are encouraged to use your imagination and/or draw inspiration from books, films, and other sources.
It’s likely that these futuristic technologies would include a combination of hardware and software aspects. For the sake of this challenge, we want to focus on just the software portion, though you could make reference to any hardware inputs or outputs as needed.
How does the actual contest work?
You have three weeks from the date this challenge is posted to submit your entry. For the first two weeks, other entries are only visible once you have submitted your own. After that, anyone can view and vote on others’ entries.
July 1: Challenge goes live
July 15: All entries visible to everyone
July 21: Challenge ends
How to Submit:
Even though the theme of this challenge relates to the use of AI technologies, we still expect your entry to be written by you. AI assistance with coding or debugging is permitted if it is disclosed in your entry and the initial code is wholly your own. It is also valid to call AI-based services for specific aspects of the solution (for example to process natural language input or create an image based on specific parameters).
Your submission should include:
An explanation of your approach
The code you have produced to create the futuristic technology
Some sample usage patterns
AI usage disclosure
Instructions for how others can run your code to observe how it works
Anything you learned or any interesting challenges you faced while coding!
How do I win?
For this coding challenge, user entries with the most upvotes will be recognized, as well as users with entries deemed to be particularly interesting by staff members. Please note that any upvotes received as part of this challenge do not count towards site reputation.



As far as know, artificial neural tissue is not yet used for virus analysis (although static analysis + heuristics + sandboxes are used for thus). Most of the source for utils is omitted due to 30,000-character-response-max for StackOverflow. Disclaimer: promotion of GitHub sources.
**
Howto: use local static analysis + heuristics + sandboxes + artificial CNS (central nervous systems) to secure computers; virus analysis tools improved** [This post from GitHub allows all uses. Post version is f81fb8a]
Intro
Static analysis + sandbox + CNS = 1 second (approx) analysis of new executables (secures all app launches,) but after first launch: caches reduce this to less than 1ms (just cost to compute
caches.at(classSha2(ClassIoBytecode())), wherecachesisstd::map<ResultListHash, VirusAnalysisResult>orResultList::hashes).../README.mdhas how to use this (what follows is more of a book of source code).(Removed duplicate licenses,
#ifguards,#includes,namespaces (except files with >=2namespaces),NOLINTBEGINs,NOLINTENDs from all exceptmain.*xx; follow URLs for whole sources.)For the most new sources (+ static libs), use apps such as iSH (for iOS) or Termux (for Android OS) to run this:
git clone https://github.com/SwuduSusuwu/SusuLib.git && cd ./SusuLib/ && git switch preview && ./build.shTo test certificates, view
../README.md#signaturecertificate+ this post.To improve how fast the whole program executes; set relevent environment flags (such as
CXXFLAGS) to enable SIMD plus OpenMP.To improve how fast backpropagation (ergo "training"; such as
Cns::setupSynapses(), which {produceAnalysisCns(),produceVirusFixCns()} use) plus forwardpropagation (ergo "inference"; such asCns::processTo*(), which {cnsAnalysisScore()andcnsVirusFix()} use) executes:for 1 or more computers, use TPUs.
for distributed compute, implement
class Cnswith TensorFlow'sMapReduce.Source code
lesscxx/VirusAnalysis.cxxComparison to assistants
For comparison;
produceVirusFixCns()withcnsVirusFix()is close to assistants, since all of them are general use artificial neural tissues which trains on couples of problems (questions, or programs infected with viruses) which map to solutions (answers, or original programs) to learn how to compute such solutions (for new problems) on their own.Have used
class Cnsto implement assistant demo throughproduceAssistantCns(),assistantCnsProcess()andassistantCnsLoopProcess():lesscxx/AssistantCns.cxx