Across the continents, programmers watch the skies. Very soon, a few of their intrepid peers will rise into that blue vaulted arena, slipping the surly bonds of Earth to dance among the Internet clouds on laughter-silvered circuit boards. What are the names of these heroes and heroines who laugh in the face of uncaring compilers and anti-patterns? It is my great honour to introduce to you, the developers of Earth, the teams of Code War 2009:

1. WA-NZ Awsome Coders (WANZAC)

• Kay Smoljak
• Andrew Mercer
• Cambpell Anderson
• Kai 'Legally Binding Document' Koenig

2. Tane Coaders (2008 Champions)

• Gareth Edwards
• Carly 'Timeline' Gooch
• Wayne McFetridge
• Darren 'Lord of the Strings' Tracey

3. The Grudenista

• Joel Cass
• Nick Shearer
• Mark Stanton
• Anthony Tambrin

4. Isobar Australia

• Daniel Tome
• Tyson Nutt
• Evgeny Komarevtsev
• James Heywood

5. Framed

• Jason Hooker
• Jason Shiao
• Brett Morgan
• Dave Cummins

6. Adobe

• Andrew Spaulding
• Mystery Guests

7. NULL

• This could be you!
• This could be your friend!
• Someone you don't really like but who is really good at regular expressions
• A drugged computer science tutor from MIT you kidnapped

8. NULL

• This could be someone you'd love to beat at in open code combat
• This is the seat their friend would have been in if you hadn't deleted their SVN repository as they were leaving work, the day before a major release
• This is your 10 year old cousin you're supposed to be baby sitting
• His mysterious 11 year old friend who you hope is really dumb, but appears to be carrying a hiring letter on Google letterhead

Yes, there are still two places available – act now to secure your place in software history! And remember, it all happens at the Crowne Plaza Darling Harbour bar at 6pm this Wednesday (rumours of substantial bar tabs are already flying).

Best Regards,

Your Host for the evening,

Robin Hilliard

7. Flying Spaghetti Monster

• Melissa Robertson
• Kathleen 'The Librarian' Watson
• Paul 'The Sucker Who Signed Up' Aeria
• Chris 'Guy Who Replied on Twitter' Beckett

8. The Delicious Geniuses

• Tatham Oddie
• Jose Fajardo
• Michael Kordahi