Coding for cred at DevCon

 

Hollywood paints a pretty picture of hackers on TV and in the movies. In 1992’s Sneakers, Robert Redford led a team of con men and hackers in a web of lies and deceit involving government agencies and organized crime. In 1995, a young and feisty Angelina Jolie showed a bunch of boys in Hackers that she could code as well as any of them.

The real picture doesn’t have Jolie or Redford. But it does have hundreds of enthusiastic young men and women, seasoned professionals, friendly competition, sugar drinks and prizes. Welcome to DevCon Philippines’ Code Challenge Cup.

Hackathons 101

According to Marketing VP Jonathan Richie Yap, “Hackathons aim to launch a product or app in a short time"—i.e., in six to 48 hours.

There's a number of local hackathons. The Manila chapter of the International Game Development Association holds the annual Global Game Jam, where participants are cloistered in a single venue for an entire weekend, and they work in teams to make a game. “Hackathons are intense events where you're under time-pressure to create a game, sometimes with people you just met. You won't be getting a lot of sleep in the next few days, and there may be some animated arguments.”

Hackathons can be centered around a specific goal. According to Paul Pajo of SMARTDevNet, the developer community for SMART’s technology platform, “You could organize hackathons depending on the operating system or mobile OS, or for a specific technology, or around social causes. We had a social causes hackathon in Cebu.”

Many participants are developers and programmers, but hackathons also draw artists, musicians, writers and other "non-devs".

“You don't really have to be a developer to join," said Jomar Tigcal, a Google Developers Group Philippines community manager. "We usually have talks in the beginning and we invite mentors to come over and help the participants. You just have to be ready with your app ideas and skills. You can be the one with the idea and look for developers who can help make your idea a reality.”

Formed in 2009, Developers Connect Philippines (DevCon) is one of the country's youngest IT capabilities development organizations. A pioneering project of the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA), DevCon “empowers Filipino developers and promotes the ‘IT Pinoy Talent’ by bringing together people from the IT industry and academe across the country.” With over 15,000 participants in its various events, DevCon programs aim to augment academic education with current IT industry trends.

Beyond hackathons, DevCon organizes other events to introduce technology topics and encourage interaction in the developer community.

Lightning talks are very quick 10-minute presentations. Birds of a Feather (BoF) is a friendly debate on trending IT topics. DevCon Geekups are informal gatherings where participants talk about how to improve the IT industry, as well as explore areas for collaboration. DevCon Code Camps are technical sessions that seek to build the technology capabilities of IT professionals and students by collaborating with technology user groups.

And finally, there are campus DevCons, usually held in partnership with the Philippine Society of Information Technology Educators (PSITE). These are like student conferences, and attendance averages 200 students, mostly taking Computer Science or other IT-related courses. Campus DevCons reach about 30 schools nationwide yearly.

Code Challenge Cup

The latest event in DevCon’s lineup is the Code Challenge Cup (C-Cup), a six-hour competition among three-member teams to come up with solutions (or "runs") to 10 problems using the programming languages C, C++, Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, C# and VB.NET. The competition has three categories: professionals, college students, and HS/GS students.

If a run is accepted, the team is awarded 1,500 points. If it is rejected, the team is given a 300-point deduction.

Bonus points can be awarded based on the minutes remaining prior to contest end.

A maximum of five runs will be accepted per problem. Scores are tallied at the end of the contest to determine the winner. If there is a tie, time of the last accepted run will be used to determine the winner.

The rules are based on those of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest. The judges are an impressive set: CEOs, presidents or VPs of their own development firms, heads of IT schools, and consultants for large corporations. Leading the judges was Cyrus Paolo "Chipi" Buenafe of HP Philippines. Part of the panel was Melvin Ryan Fetalvero, Associate Director for R&D of Chikka Philippines. Another important name was Bryan Bibat, who is not only the DevCon VP for Technology, but also the winner of the recent BigAs SMART-IRRI Hackathon.

On paper it sounds like a college exam. But this is one exam where big prizes are at stake: P21,000 for the champions, P9,000 for the first runner-up; P6,000 for the second runner-up; and P3,000 each for the collegiate and high school winners.

The winners also got trophies. But everyone, win or lose, got to fill themselves up with free food and drink during the six-hour coding marathon.

While prize money is always a great lure, more important to the winners is the prestige that comes with the victory, and they’re hungry for more. “For the professional teams, it underscores their talents and bragging rights aside from validating their program. For the students, it encourages them to work harder and perfect their craft aside from boosting their confidence," said Yap. "Overall, most of the participants went home happy, fulfilled and challenged. There is already a clamor to have the event more regularly, and not wait for 2013.”

There are so many development groups popping up, and hackathons and geek meetups happening all over the country now, said Yap. “Everybody wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or RJ David of Sulit, or to found the next Google. It is like the lottery, but hard work and vision will play a key.”

Zuckerberg and other young Silicon Valley icons put in the time, talent and hard work to make their products the household names they are today. What will it take for the Philippines to get on the international developers map? “They must first learn to think outside the box and do things the right way, then do fancy stuff," said Yap. "I believe an analytical mind, coolness under pressure and the drive to succeed are the three main ingredients to be a good developer. C-Cup tries to identify good devs whom we can train to be engineers and entrepreneurs. DevCon's Founder, Mr. Winston Damarillo, wants to help solve poverty through IT by turning people to engineers then to entrepreneurs.”

If hunching over a computer for six hours will help make the Philippines a better place, then hackathons are definitely the way to go. — BM, GMA News