How we HackPSU won

Hello!

I have long wanted to join your online community, but unfortunately there were no ideas for a post or could not get an invite. But then HackPSU happened, and I decided to write a post about how everything went, who was the sponsor, as well as about the most interesting Workshop. I will try, maybe not briefly, but quite interestingly to tell about what happened.

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Let's start with the fact that my name is Daniyar, I come from Kazakhstan, Astana. I am a sophomore at Pennsylvania State University with a degree in Computer Science. One day, late in the evening, a message came from InnoBlue, a community at our university, they invited all students, one way or another connected with programming, to participate in the hackathon from our university. Not only local students were invited, but also students from other universities, such as UPenn, Carnegie Mellon, North Carolina State University, New York University. First of all, we started to assemble a team, but unfortunately, not many agreed. The reasons are not known to me, but still our "team" consisted of 2 people: me and my friend Alibek. He is older than me, now he graduates from university, specialty Math and Computer Science, also from Kazakhstan. Honestly, we didn’t even come up with a name for the team, but still full of confidence, we rushed into battle.

The hackathon theme was not very diverse, most of the time the trend was set by the sponsoring companies. Another word "Who pays the money, he and the girl dancing." The categories were following, mobile app, website, hardware technology. At the first moment, we were very upset, because almost all the main Computer Science courses are taught in C ++, JAVA and C. Our team knew the basics of JavaScript and could build a simple HTML page using CSS3, since the Internet is full of courses. But this is where mobilz comes to the rescue with his post “Easy way to write iOS apps on the web” , where literally fingers tell the basics of programming a web app for an IPhone. It was the thread we could grab onto ...

The main list of prizes:


And then it was Friday, exactly at 8:00 PM, we entered the IST Building in our campus at University Park. We were a bit late, and we got a small force majeure with registration. But when all the paperwork was settled, we moved to the presentation. I forgot to mention, during registration, we were given a coupon for a free domain in the ".net", ".com", ".org", ".biz" and ".info" zones for one year, a reference book from and on MongoDB and a couple of photo bricks. (“What is already very, very not bad, agree?”). At the presentation, we were told about the goals of the hackathon, partners were presented to the company, where each representative presented commercial APIs for development, as well as “not the main gifts” for the contestants. ("Full list of companies under the cat"). After we were presented the schedule of the upcoming workshops (“What is also under the cut”). Most of the workshops were very far from programming, but we went a couple and were very pleased, as they showed the use of API and just basics of programming with an example. As a person who has never coded on Objective-C, it was very interesting for me to go to the workshop entitled “Getting started with iOS”. The most interesting thing is that this workshop was led by a Russian guy, who then himself met us when he heard that we spoke Russian.

Reference book from MongoDB:


Coupon for a free domain:


Workshop's:


Sponsor companies:



After we went to the workshop from the company Mashery, engaged in the development and distribution of APIs. They have +40 APIs from a variety of companies, ranging from the WorldWeatherOnline API and WhitePages, to the USA Today and AETNA APIs. We could not even imagine an API, for example, from the Coca Cola Company or theGuardian. The most interesting thing is that the agent of this company provided us with free, full access to any API, and also presented us with Intel XDK, a framework for mobile UI, ("In the article from mobilz mentioned above, there is a mention of it"). We could not attend all the workshops, as many went at the same time or took place in the middle of the night.

Taken with @masherydev

Having finished with the workshops, we had dinner with free pizza and soda (“Food for programmers”), and started coding.
Our main idea was to use opensource Spritz and create a news reader using spritz technologies. Our dumbest mistake was that we started using the Intel XDK. This “application” works terribly on MacOS and creates just a nightmarish trash can of code that we had to rake later. In general, Intel XDK is pleasant for the development of the concept, the main shell for the presentation, but not for the real work. First of all, it was decided to build the application on the knee, rummaging through js files and understanding the principle of the algorithms, we began to write code. Later, they began to tie various tweeters and twisters for "beauty", since the judges at the hackathon were not professional programmers and the main goal was to surprise them with a beautiful picture. The second priority was the use of one of the API from Mashery, as the representative generally had good prizes for users.

Not having slept for a day, we had a prototype of an application that works quite well, using one of the ESPN APIs provided by Mashery. I certainly understand that “this” could have been written in a couple of hours, but we need to take into account the fact that we only knew the basics of web programming, and in my opinion we learned more than 24 hours in what we could learn in month.

Frankly, I was already running out, I wanted to quit when you were hungry and tired at 6 o'clock in the morning, sitting and staring blankly at the screen, realizing that “you are not messing about.” But on the last breakthrough, we finished our application and tired we went to represent our project. We were extremely not sure that we would win anything. But the attempt is not torture ...

The presentation began at 10 am. We were even afraid to submit our application, considering it miserable, but nevertheless a representative from the same company Mashery was the first to come to us. We presented our application, not without a couple of embarrassments. Other judges approached, and meanwhile, we all tried to come up with new “usefulness” of our application. After the departure of the smiling and surprised judges, a little bit of enthusiasm came to us.

After the presentation, everyone was called to the main audience, and our long wait began there. I was exhausted, fell asleep right on the table. Suddenly, my friend beats me on the shoulder, I sleepy raise my head and do not understand what is happening around. Having collected my thoughts, I realized that the agent is on the stage and holds our awards from the sponsoring company. We are slightly surprised, we go down to the podium, shake hands, take pictures and pick up gifts, mainly we won in this category through the use of API from this company. Still not believing our own happiness, we take our seats.
A few minutes later, in the hall there is silence, and the main organizer from the podium looks in our direction. Having downcast a little, we understand that this is our soul and that we have taken the third place in the hackathon! I was so surprised for the first time in my life. I could not even imagine that we would win anything at all, and then third place as well! After talking with the sponsors, we went home joyful.


Hackathon is a place where we met people of the same interests, where we found a storehouse of new information that we did not have time to get enough, a place where we applied our skills in practice and a place where we understood how cool it was to create something new and interesting, from almost nothing. And the most important thing is how cool it is to be a programmer.

PS All information provided in this article should not be perceived as advertising in one form or another.