Hackathon Angelhack 2016: a week later in the first of 4 cities

I have a good tradition with Apps4All: once a year the guys bring the largest hackathon to the world to Russia, and I lead it. Well, what does “lead” mean? I help as much as I can. Hackathon is not a children's matinee, it is not necessary to conduct it. It is necessary to bring together developers, provide them with interesting challenges, pizza, coffee, energy drinks - and not interfere 24 hours. And the next day, put a variety of jury members in comfortable chairs and arrange a show with a live demonstration of what they had done.

Hackathon is like a disco. Only for IT professionals

It is a common misconception that a hackathon is like a programming contest. It is necessary to study mathematics for years and study the C ++ standard, to disassemble the brain-constructive tasks of previous years, to prepare a few months before the event, and all in order to come and take the fifth place from the end. So, hackathon is quite another. This is about hackers in the sense of “those who create programs”, about parties, pizza, new acquaintances, about startups, introverts and selfies with comrades known in narrow circles.



Angelhack does not require any preparation - just register on the site and come to the beginning of one of the four hackathons. Or two. Or all four. The first half of the day is devoted to introducing the course - I tell you from the stage how it all works, the sponsors explain what they are ready to give prizes to, well, and the most active ones feed their ideas. After that, during the lunch break, there is an active formation of teams - and off you go, into battle! 24 hours of continuous coding can withstand about a third of those who came. A third more sleep here on easy chairs, well, the remaining third creeps home or to a hotel for the night. By the middle of the second day, a jury sits in front of the stage, all the teams gather in the largest hall - and the performance starts from the stage, where in 2-3 minutes you need to show on the big screen what was created during the night. After seeing the performances of all the teams (and there are up to 50 of them in particularly fruitful years), the jury is removed to make a decision. And, finally, the funniest thing is the distribution of prizes, of which hackathons are usually dofig and more. Angelhack is no exception.

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All you need to do is bring a laptop with you.

The second most common misconception is that in order to participate in the hackathon you need to be a mega-programmer who can get a second facebook stuck during the night. Well, or at worst, Angry Birtds.



This is certainly not the case. To participate in the hackathon nothing is needed at all - just a laptop. Come, and a quarter of the teams will gladly welcome you - search for something on the Internet, help test, participate in brainstorming. There are no extra hands on the hackathon. Designers are especially highly valued, a typical situation - “a team of three developers with a mega idea is looking for a designer who will draw at least something”



As for the technical implementation, in 24 hours, in principle, nothing particularly complicated can be created. The interest of the hackathon in a short time to come up with a competitive idea and implement a prototype. It does not matter that instead of the server stub, and most of the logic does not work. Well, technology like our voximplant will help in a few lines of code to use a truly impressive magic.

Prizes help fool the brain

The most valuable thing in the hackathon is the conditions close to the combat ones. All in all - competition with other teams, large cash prizes, the opportunity to win a trip to Silicon Valley. Participation in such an event truly mobilizes all forces and allows you to significantly improve your IT skills in a short period of time. Under the new year, I flew to Junction, a large hackathon in Finland. I won nothing, but I got a lot of fun and discovered some serious flaws in my knowledge of Android.



So we are waiting for everyone at the next event! Free registration, schedule, map and other information - on the official site . See you in Innopolis!