I chose to attend the Demonhacks hackathon. This was my first ever hackathon, so I was nervous going into it. Fortunately, ACM was also attending so I was able to meet up with them first. I was mostly nervous because I don’t know much about coding. I was worried I wouldn’t be of much use to my team members; however, they were extremely kind and understanding.
My team chose to build a webpage using Google Maps and the CTA API. I had no experience building a web page, so one of my biggest takeaways is playing around with Angular. I was also able to get a lot of practice with using terminal, which I was not familiar with going into the event. I also attended a talk on Github because I have not used that before either. I am happy to say I feel slightly familiar with the platform now.
I feel the hackathon showed me a lot of different aspects of computer science. I am only familiar with Java, but I was also able to see many coders using Python and C++. It also showed me that computer science takes a lot of research, understanding, and testing. The grad students I was working with were constantly on Google and Youtube in order to understand how to implement the API. There was also a lot of collaboration among our team members as we all made different discoveries. We used the webpage as a tester because we weren’t sure we could get the API to work at all. We started with the bus tracker, with plans to continue with the train tracker if all went well.
I would definitely do something like this again because I enjoyed being further integrated into the world of computer science and programming. I feel like it is worth the extra practice and experience.
This weekend I attended DeamonHacks at Depaul. Previously, I had only attended one Hackathon, however, It was only 10 hours and I was 14 years old and did not know anything about CS or coding. For this Hackathon, I was very excited because it was my first Hackathon that was 26 hours and I knew friends who were going. There were so many students from all over Chicago and from out of state. It was really cool how so many people would dedicate so much time to come together for one competition. The announced that the theme of Deamonhacks was public transportation. With our team of four, we spent an hour deciding what to do. We finally decided to make a system that tracks the available capacity on each cart of a train on the CTA. We built the backend with Java to find the range of available capacity and then we sent that data to our MySQL database. Then we made a website that would take that data and display it to the user. This Hackathon helped me learn how back-end and front-end development connect. I was able to learn enough MySQL in 26 hours to make a working system. I will definitely be attending another Hackathon in the future.
I decided to go to DePaul’s Demon Hacks as my first ever hackathon. I was slightly nervous going in since I have not programmed much outside of a classroom setting and had no idea as to what we were going to program. I went in expecting to be not very useful to my team, but this wasn’t the case.
It was very interesting seeing computer science being applied to a real-world problem; public transportation in this case. Spending time with my team to discuss how to use computer science to resolve actual situations was a very enriching experience as it made me realize how applicable programming is everywhere. My team decided to make a phone app that would access a user’s google calendar and then give reminders when a CTA train or bus would leave at times that corresponded with the user’s schedule.
As a result, I got to learn how to make an android app using Java. I had only ever made phone apps using code-block languages before, so learning how apps work with a detailed language like Java was fascinating.
Although my team did not develop our app as far as we had hoped, I stilled learned a great amount of new skills. I also found it interesting seeing how other teams approached the topic and what languages they used. I was surprised by how popular Python was since I had previously thought the language was intended purely for educational purposes and not real-world applications.
Overall, I learned a great deal more than I was expecting to by attending a hackathon and will very much consider attending more in the future.
Over last weekend, I attended DemonHacks with other students I knew. I was excited because I heard about the experience that some friends had at the Paypal hackathon the previous weekends. I’ve never been to another hackathon so I was ready to see what it was like, firsthand. I was fortunate to have a team set up before I arrived because I had enough friends to go with. When I arrived, I got to meet sponsors like JPMorgan, Brooksource, and Aquatic. Hearing about what they were looking for in students intrigued me. When the topic for this hackathon was released (public transit and social good) my team and I got to work; Our plan was to create a reward system app that awards points to people for using the CTA that can be redeemed for a free ride for themselves and another for someone who needs it. I learned a lot about how to plan a functional application, the work that goes into creating an app (front-end and back-end development has to work together), got through the process of getting stuck and overcoming issues in writing programs,and how Git is used for a team to develop a functional product. Everything was programmed in java since that was what our team was best at. We didn’t place in the award ceremony, but heard a lot of positive comments from other teams and judges. Lynn was in one of the other teams we knew, and it was cool to meet up every now and then during the weekend so that we can take time to relax and talk about our struggles. Overall, we were happy with what we learned and were able to create in the time we had. I will definitely go to more hackathons!
This weekend I attended the DemonHacks hackathon at DePaul. Going in, I felt a little intimidated since I did not have an idea or a team, but I quickly found a team and we started brainstorming ideas. There were many students from in and out of state, so it was nice to meet new people. Our team decided to do the social good theme sponsored by JPMorgan, and we decided to make an app that enables people in areas to post “one-time” jobs, such as getting your lawn cut, basic maintenance, etc. It is a win-win because it helps people get those jobs done (at their asking price too!) and helps those who may be unemployed or looking for some quick cash to earn some money and possibly sustain a career they may be pursuing.
We decided to make the app a mobile-app made in React Native since the UI was strongly coupled with the logic of the app. The idea was to make the app account-based, where each account represented as a model in our code would have a rating, username, age, and other data associated with it. Originally we were planning to have a backend NodeJS API server interact with a PostgreSQL db instance so that we could make the account system work and let other data persist, but after quite a bit of time we observed that the depaul network seemed to not allow connections to services that were not on default ports (both internally on the network and externally). This was a problem because if we wanted to either:
a.) directly interact with the remote database
b.) let the local API server interact with the database
..neither of those would be possible due to that limitation. This is because if the API server was hosted locally, the mobile device would not be able to interact over the network with the API server. Also, in development mode, the mobile device downloads the javascript bundle over the network from the dev server. This was not possible either, but luckily the dev server had an option to tunnel the request, so we were able to use that despite the issues it did inevitably have (i.e. transfer speed of the bundle over the tunnel).
So the remaining option was just to do everything related to the remote database (even in development mode) through a remote API server. That was not ideal considering again we were in development mode (deploying after every change), and the limited amount of time we had.
Something new I did learn though when we attempted to make the API server was how we were going to transfer the data. The API server would send raw JSON to our application, and the app could serialize the JSON (quite easily seeing as we were writing it in javascript) into an object that would reflect an instance of an explicit model in our application.
So we scratched the idea of a backend and instead just had static sample data our app would load in. This also limited us to remove all features of the app that would post any data since that data would have to be on the database. However, we still made the interface for posting jobs, we just made it do nothing when you submitted it. All after all, the app boiled down to 3 main functions: searching for users sorted by rating, searching for jobs sorted by most recent, and the UI to post jobs.
At the project expo, it was very interesting to see what other people had created in such a short amount of time. The projects were very diverse and everyone was passionate about the hard work they had done in the past 24 hours. It helped me learn more about Computer Science because we got to apply what we learned in our courses into a functional application that serves to solve a real problem. I would like to go to an activity like this again, but preferably with more time and what constraints there are told to us ahead of time (i.e. the network constraints).
This past weekend, I attended the Demonhacks Hackathon at Depaul University. It was my first hackathon and is definitely not going to be my last. Coming into the hackathon, my expectations were kind of uncertain. If anything, I thought I was about to go into a huge convention with high tech equipment everywhere. In reality, it had more of a camping vibe to it. You are stuck in a room in a building with no windows where you eat, sleep, and code. I knew I was going to be pretty behind in coding compared to other people competing considering my lack of skills but the gap was way bigger. My group and I worked on a mobile app to employ people to work one time jobs, such as it works sort of like uber. To do this, I had to learn javascript, React Native, and GitHub from scratch. It was pretty difficult and we made our app with minimal resources. So you can only imagine how many new things I learned in that 24 hour period. This hackathon taught me how to code in different ways and collaborate with others to make functions within the app. There is no doubt I would do something like this in the future. Not anytime near because I need to take a huge step forward if anything but the whole hackathon as a whole was enjoyable. I was more interested in seeing other people’s ideas and creativity as the event went on.
Going into DemonHacks 2019, I was quite nervous. For one, I didn’t know what to expect, as this was my first hackathon. I also didn’t see how I could apply what I know about object-oriented programming to create a solution to a specific category of issues. My group consisted of 4 freshman undergraduates from IIT. We struggled to not only come up with an idea but also create an idea that we could realistically deploy with our collective, not-so-vast knowledge in the allotted time. In the end, we failed to create our idea in time. However, despite this failure, I still feel that hackathons are a low-risk environment for any person to apply their knowledge in many meaningful ways. At DemonHacks, there were “Tech Talks” that gave us insight into a variety of topics. One of them, called “Git Gud,” introduced GitHub and taught me the basics of how to use it. In the process of creating our idea, I also learned about basic hardware devices such as Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. DemonHacks also provided a first-hand experience of what a career in computer science would be like, with strict 24-hour deadlines and collaborations with others on a project. I’d love to attend another hackathon when I get more experience so that I could actually contribute to a group with my coding experience.
Last week, I attended the Demonhack hackathon at DePaul University. I’ve never participated before in such hackathon, so it was my 1st hackathon ever. I was very scared to go there because I’m a freshmen student and I didn’t know anyone there, but my expectation was very high. It is because I was expecting to learn something new which can be very useful for my study and career as well. There were many students from different college of Chicago. After getting there, we were divided into different groups and they gave us a theme of event which was public transportation. So, all of us from our group were working and dedicating our skills on theme for the competition. We spent many hours on coding. Since we all were freshmen, it was difficult for us to getting into the theme. But we took help from resources, asked seniors for some help, and we were able to make a system which can show us the availability of seats on transport.
Also, from that 26 hours of hackathon, I learned some more coding of Javascript, and GitHub which I have never heard before. GitHub is used to control system because it stores file change more efficiently and ensures file integrity better. This hackathon taught me many things. So, I look forward to attending such events more in future.
As DemonHacks was the first Hackathon I have ever attended, I was quite excited to join it. Although, I feel that I couldn’t contribute to my group as much as I was supposed to, which is inevitable as I have only started to learn programming this year. Will I join other Hackathons? Yes, of course: the next one is only a week away.
We joined DemonHacks as a group of five, all freshman. The main topic was Public Transit, and the sponsors had challenges for us. JP Morgan Chase was one of them, they wanted a project about social help. So, we decided to make a project that fulfills both of them. We decided to help high school children with their transportation fees, while maintaining the company profits.
We named our project PandaPoints. It is a mobile app that tracks down the times you have ridden the CTA train, and gives you Panda points for each ride. Once you reach a certain point, it rewards you with a free ticket. In addition to that, the company donates another free ticket to a donation pool from which high school students can benefit.
It was reasonable to break down the problem and give each member different aspect of the project. I took the front-end part of it, and also made calculations to make sure that the company will not lose its profits in the process.
I learned the rough draft of a server in this period. I really enjoyed how we make connections between classes and data. Although we couldn’t implement the codes into the server during DemonHacks, I hope we will complete it in the next one.
Over the weekend I attended my first-ever hackathon at Demonhacks. I am fairly new to cs so I did not know what to expect. Fortunately for me, I went with my friends who had experience. I was fairly nervous because I knew that I was most likely the only one who did not have any experience. When we started we did not have many ideas. My group and I came up with the idea of a loyalty rewards system for the CTA. We wanted to reward the people for using public transit and help others in need as well. The first thing we had to focus on was who to give the passes too. We made it so highschool students would get the free passes because they have an ID that is with the Chicago public school system. Our main goal was to promote the use of public transit but to also give back to the students who do not have ventra passes such as college students. We created a system gave points to people every time they scanned their ventra cards on the CTA’s. Every consecutive day they scanned it, the person would earn the points faster. All of our code was java and we also used android studio to make a demo. Although we did not win anything this was a great experience for me and I am most likely going to attend Demonhacks in the following year.
DemonHacks was the first hackathon I’ve gone to, and it will most likely be my last for a while. I wasn’t exactly sure what a hackathon was so I was was rightfully nervous. I also had no clue who else was going nor did I have an idea of what were the things a hackathon has to offer. However after attending the 26-hour hackathon, I realized something that I’ve always heard, but never really observed, and that is: anything I learned going to school was almost unusable at the hackathon. This was certainly a surprise because I felt useless for my team and I felt I was just wasting my time sitting there doing nothing. I did learn how to (somewhat) use Git, but even then it was only an hour presentation. The most useful thing for me was talking to some of the ACM members and learning about different software and frameworks can be used to make a final product. In the future I will most likely not attend an activity like this unless my coding skills increase dramatically or I already have a team of friends and we all go together. The best part about the hackathon was obviously the food for we had constant access to all type of snacks and drinks.
The past weekend I had the opportunity to try out on my first ever Hackathons, the DemonHacks at DePaul University. I had never experienced anything like that before so I didn’t really know what to do or to expect. The topic was on public transit and my team, after a long while finally came up with an idea fascinating enough to build something from it. We got to fiddle with many different API, I got the chance to try out some Android app making and emulators, seeing many coders there with much more knowledge on many other languages is pretty cool. ACM was especially nice to us, they were willing to help when there was something that didn’t work with the IDE or the basic things that many us freshman didn’t have too much experience with yet. overall, seeing the products and the amazing idea at the end of day 2 was what the experience overall, even though our idea didn’t come to a finished product, I’d gladly try out for something like a hackathon again.
Last weekend I attended my second hackathon ever. The theme was public transportation and social good. My team decided to make our project around both topics, including an adorable panda mascot. The app was called Panda Points. Our app was a rewards system for riding the CTA. Each time a passenger tapped into the train they were rewarded points that would add up to a free ride. The more days they rode consecutively, the more points they received. When they got a free ride they would additionally donate one to a high school student in Chicago. The student could obtain this free ride by demonstrating their high school ID at the station. This would promote use of the train and help students get to school. I worked with Android Studio to make a demo of what the app would look like. It included a log in screen, the home page, your account information, history and settings page. Although we never connected the front end to the backend code, I was very happy with our work. I enjoyed showing the judges the demo and they mostly all agreed it was a good idea. They really liked the panda. I had a great experience at this hackathon and cannot wait to learn more in the next one I attend.
Last weekend I attended the DemonHacks hackathon at Depaul University. It was my first time ever going a hackathon, so you can imagine that there was a lot I didn’t expect. At first I was anxious since I had little experience in programming. I was worried I would become a detriment to the team I was put in. However, Demonhacks was not lying when they said the event was beginner-friendly. The people I was with were amiable and patient, not to mention a few were from outside the United States, so I was able to hear their interesting anecdotes on why they decided to pursue computer science. Public transit was the topic of focus of the hackathon, so my team and I developed an app that would alert people sleeping or preoccupied on a bus or train that their destination was close. Our team made use of Android Studio to develop the application from scratch. It was interesting to know that basic app development can be done using a program like Android Studio; I was always under the impression that there was more to it than that. One major take-away from the event was my exposure to Git and Github, and how it makes coordination between developers significantly easier. During the panel showcase, the judges liked the idea and thought it showed great potential should the application be expanded upon. Overall, my first ever hackathon was such an unforgettable experience, so much so that I am inclined to attend more in the future.
Last weekend, I attended my first-ever hackathon, Demonhacks 2019. I had had a lot of insecurities before the event, mostly because I haven’t attended anything like this before, and I had so many Homeworks due and midterms the following week that I couldn’t entirely focus on preparing for the hackathon. After 24 hours of hacking, although our team wasn’t able to turn our ideas into a finished product, I did learn a lot about how to use different tools and APIs, specifically the Git, Github (thanks to the one-hour informative tech talk) and mobile app making tools like Android studio and flutter. The theme “public transit” was really cool, and we got to hear ideas from different people. The food is really good. I had my first deep dish pizza there, which shows that I am also learning about some of Chicago’s culture and cuisine as an international student. The ACM and mentors there were really friendly and helpful. Without them, we wouldn’t have any clue what to do with our idea. That seems to show that I personally have so much to learn to actually contribute to society as a computer science major. Because of that, I would love to attend another hackathon to learn more, but not so soon, at least until I am confident enough about my skills that I can make the most of my time there or my friends invite me to attend another one.
I attended to the Demon Hackathon at Depaul University. Before attending this hackathon I was nervous and somewhat excited because I did not know what to expect. I thought that most people in the event were going to be experts and better than me. However, I formed my team previous of going to the event with some of my friends that go to Depaul, and had some comfort knowing that I was not going to be all alone.
The hackathon was an interesting experience to say the least. I did not know if I was going to be able to help my teammates with the problems presented. I learned about the process of taking a problem and using Git and javascript to solve it. The constant persistence trying to figure out many problems throughout the day was difficult and something I valued after going to the event.
This activity helped me understand more about the different types of languages such as C++. At the beginning of the hackathon I did not have much knowledge about the specific types of programming languages. However, as the day kept going from my teammates I began to understand more each concept. Also, I observed how my teammates interacted with the API to make the application better.
I would definitely consider attending another hackathon again. Even if at times the problem appear to be complex to solve, the experience of having to work with other people all having the same goal was fun. Also, hearing the experiences from other students at the event was great. Overall, it was a great weekend coding with friends.
This past weekend, I attended the Demonhacks Hackathon at Depaul University. Since this was my very first hackathon, I really did not know what to expect. I just had the most vague idea from how other people described it, you group up with other people, you are given a topic, and you have a whole day to create or program something relating to the topic. However, the idea of creating something from nothing with your ideas, within 24 hours actually got me very excited. With my current knowledge of programming and performance in my current CS classes, I thought that I had a good chance of performing well during the programming part. But was I ever more wrong. My group decided to create an app that connects people with simple one time jobs. With this idea, I had to learn a new interface, react native, and also learn 2 new programming languages, javascript and CSS. So with the already limited time we had, I had to educate myself with completely new things just to contribute to the team. It took us about 7 hours to learn the material and get the interface ready to use, after that remained the most stressful 17 hours of my life. We pulled through and completed our project, but this experience taught the importance of teamwork in the field of Computer Science. In the real world applications, if one person slacks off or doesn’t finish their part, the whole program would not work and could lead to bad terms with your group partners and future employers.
I enjoyed this experience very much and would go to more because it gave me the best representation of working in the field of computer science in this point of my education.
Last weekend, I went to the DemonHacks Hackathon downtown at Depaul University. This was my first hackathon so I did not know what exactly to expect. I assumed we would be building either a program, website, or something physical, like a robot. Instead, my team ended up building a phone app. There were two themes at the hackathon. The first one was “public transportation.” We decided not to focus on this theme; it seemed like all of the ideas our team was coming up with had already been done already. For example, a lot of our ideas revolved around new ways to track buses and trains, but we later realized that there is not much need for another tracker app, since the city already has one that works well enough. All of the good ideas were too complicated, considering this the first hackathon any of us had attended, and all of the practical ideas were not worth doing. We decided to go with second theme, which was “social good.” The purpose of our app was for poor people and/or teenagers to find simple, one-time jobs to make a “quick buck.” One of the biggest things I learned is that, when trying to create anything, half of the battle is getting the environment working. Before our group could get any real work done, we spent at least two hours installing random things on our computers and making sure they worked properly. It is honestly really frustrating, especially when you start having problems before you even truly start working. Would I attend something like this again? I would eventually, but not at any time in the near future. I would like to have a better understanding of what I am doing and perhaps have a few more “tools” in my belt before I would go again. I assume sometime around my junior year I will try again.
I felt nervous and excited about going to the DemonHacks hackathon at DePaul University before actually attending it. My nervousness came from the fact that I have never been to a hackathon before and am not completely confident in my programming skills using Java. As for my excitement, that originated from my desire to try out something new. Hopefully I am much more prepared for the next hackathon I attend. At one of the Tech Talks hosted at DemonHacks centered around Personal and Application Security, I learned about OWASP which stands for Open Web Application Security Project and is a 501(c)(3) worldwide not-for-profit organization focused on improving the security of software. I would go to another activity like this again because I had a really good overall experience and there was plenty of free food throughout the whole hackathon. I liked how the whole hackathon schedule was organized into many different activities such as Tech talks instead of being exclusively hacking which gave it much variety and enjoyability. I enjoyed the chance I got to meet other students and to visit another university. The DePaul staff managing the hackathon were nothing short of helpful and kind and the CDM building was a clean environment to be in.
I had heard about Hackthons before from books, magazines and TV. I instantly thought of the movie the Social Network and as a result, my impression was one that a of bunch of really smart programmers who came together and “hacked” while not sleeping for 24+ hours. Being a freshman, I also went in overwhelmed by the fact that my only CS experience has so far been from intro to java classes in highschool and college. However, my expectations were pleasantly subverted when I learnt there that participating in a Hackathon comprised of many different non CS related factors such as idea design and logistics. Sure, knowing how to fully facilitate an idea into life required considerable practical coding knowledge, but I was lucklily able to form a team with 2 people who had already graduated with a CS degree. It was an exhilarilating experience, as we brainstormed and went thru atleast 20 iterations of the same idea. We ran out of time at the end and although we didnt have nowhere near a functioning product, the amount of work we had gotten done was gratifying. I got to learn and experiment with the Android Studio for the first time, and also got to see aspects of data science such as machine learning applied in a personal project for the first time. I now realize that I had witnessesed what is a vital component of a computer science: that experimenting and learning new things(new languages, APIs) on a regular basis is a neccessary aspect of completing the job. Even my team mates who weren’t familiar with android studio worked hard and had to brush up on their Java. I look forward on catching another Hackathon in the future, and hopefully aware of my past experience, be able to contribute on a greater level.
Demonhacks was definitely a new experience for me since this was my first hackathon. Going into the hackathon, I knew I wasn’t going to win mainly because I currently only know Java, so I really just came to learn, but then again learning is winning. Win or lose, it was a win-win situation. The hackathon was advertised as “beginner friendly”, so I thought why not. I really hope they stop saying it is “beginner friendly” because it is really not. This just doesn’t go for this hackathon, but others that say the similar message. I soon came to realize that React is a trending language right now, so there’s a new language for me to learn right after I learn HTML and javascript. Almost everyone I talked to used React within their project in some way. As for future hackathons, I definitely wouldn’t mind coming to another one, it just wouldn’t be much of a priority. I just feel as if there is more and better things to do than hackathons like building a side project to add onto your portfolio. Not only do I feel that there is more, but I just don’t like the idea that these hackathon promoters are encouraging unhealthy habits that only makes the programming or “hacking” culture look bad. While this was my first hackathon, I’ll keep an open-mind for future hackathons.
DeamonHacks at DePaul was the first hackathon I have ever attended. I must admit, before I even decided to sign up, I was unsure if I would like staying overnight just working on some random problem that we would be given to us. I believed it was going to be the same stuff that we were doing during class. However, after finding a team of friends, I realized that we had more liberty to do what we wanted to do. I have worked in collaboration with others in reaching an ultimate goal but it never heavily revolved around software; this quickly turned into an exciting project. The main theme given to us was public transportation. My team and I, at the time, did not realize that this was only one of the suggested themes that we could focus on. On retrospect, this was actually good for us as we only focused on covering one theme instead of overwhelming ourselves with all of them. Nevertheless, once the mentors dismissed us, we went to work on deciding a problem and solving it. The dynamic my team had was like second nature, two of us worked back end and the other two worked front. I worked on pushing data from a Java back end to a local MySQL database. I had never done anything like this before which is why in the end it was nice to see that it was all working as intended. Experiencing my first Hackathon has definitely made me consider attending another one.
I attended DemonHacks hosted by Depaul University last weekend. As it was my first hackathon, I felt incredibly tense and nervous, but as my team formed, I began to feel more comfortable. My only extracurricular coding experience comes from being on a FIRST robotics team. The only language I knew was java but I had been using it to program for two years. Our hack was to create a weight-based capacity tracker system that would measure the number of people on a single train car and display that information onto a website. While working on our solution, we began to realize that our hack couldn’t be created with only Java. We ended up collectively using 5 different languages to create our solution and upload it onto a website. Personally, I learned new aspects and uses of Java and learned basic HTML and CSS. My responsibility for my team was to assist in making a back-end java program that would output data into a database, which would then be moved onto the website. This experience has given me insight as to what a career in computer science may entail in the future as well as the skills and attributes necessary to be able to perform well in any given computer science-related career. In the future, I hope to attend more hackathons so I may better understand the different aspects of computer science as well as potential niches I may be able to fill in the professi0onal world.
I attended DemonHacks as my first ever hackathon. I was nervous at first because I didn’t know what to expect, but after arriving and starting the event, my nerves went away. I got to meet many other students from universities all around Chicago and from all across the midwest. My team and I took part in all three challenges that were available at the hackathon. As opposed to the traditional classroom setting, we had to create a back end code base and a front end user interface. We also had to present our project to judges and explain all of its functionality thoroughly. That experience will definitely help me become more conscious of creating a good front end experience that a user will appreciate as well as a functional and efficient back end that will help my software function to the best of its ability. The event overall was great and was a fantastic learning experience. The staff at the event were very kind and professional and the building was a great environment. I would definitely attend another hackathon again and, in fact, I’ve already registered for and will be attending VandyHacks at Vanderbilt, and I’m looking forward to working with another group of people on another great project.
I attended the DePaul Hackathon last week Saturday through Sunday. I felt unsure about the event as I was very new to Hackathons and everyone around me seemed to know what they were doing so It intimidated me a bit. I attended this event with my friend and my TA for my CS115 class. We were paired in groups that were random according to what applications and program languages you liked if you did not have a group prior to the event. The event itself consisted of many people from different universities and institutions all over the US so it was great interacting with them and learn their lifestyle back home. Most of the people that were next to my group were upperclassmen, some even Seniors so they had a lot of experience when it came to creating an app for CTA public transit and how to make it better, although it was a broad topic. Further in the event they had some guest speakers who introduced GitHub and pretty cool features on it as well such as collaborating on each others classes and projects. There was a different guest speaker who spoke about encryption code on passwords and how easy it may be for hackers to access them. The guest speaker also went over some of the topics that we had already talked about in our CS100 lecture. Overall, it was a great experience for me as it gave me a different idea on what Hackathons were all about and I’ll be sure to prepare for the next one!
Before attending DemonHacks, I have never before attended an activity where I implement my knowledge of coding to develop a certain product. Each day as DemonHacks crept closer and closer, I felt more of an urge to just not go. However, I’m glad I did go. As a freshman majoring in computer science, I was not at all confident in my programming skills, especially since I have so much more to learn. I formed a group with a couple of my friends that attend DePaul University. Since we were all pretty new to coding, we decided to start our product small and finish big (We did not finish big). As the theme was public transit, we were hoping to create a certain kind of app (more of a game) that would consist of a train (the moving object), which got bigger the more passengers that got inside it (literally a snake game). In my personal opinion, I enjoyed this hackathon more for the experience rather than the actual programming as I was introduced to a lot of new information. Since my friends at DePaul were more used to languages such as JavaScript, we decided to create our game in that language. This Hackathon helped me learn additional programming skills in languages that I had just a tad bit of knowledge on. I really enjoyed talking with the sponsors and job recruiters as helped me understand how my life in computer science would look like after graduating. To conclude, It is very likely for me to attend an activity like this again in the future. I am very passionate about the field of entrepreneurship involving computer science, as there is so much potential there. However, before I attend another hackathon, I will need to learn much more, as next time, I plan to win.
On october 19, I attended my first hackathon. DemonHacks was my first ever hackathon that I ever attended. As an amateur coder going there by myself was very nerve wrecking because I didn’t know anyone going there and also my coding skills were not as experience as that many people going there. But the people at the hackathon made my experience enjoyable. The reason why is because a random group asked if I wanted to join them in helping them create an app for the competition. I made it clear to them that I was a beginner and was not very experience in coding apps. It didn’t matter to them because they made sure that I was able to help them in other ways and to teach me certain things about creating apps that will I can benefit from in the future. Through the project I was able to increase my knowledge of both java and javascript and how they are used in creating apps. And I was introduce to GitHub, which I have heard of it but never bother looking at. So it was my first time creating an account on GitHub and my team showed me how GitHub worked and the different codes that people have in there show others. Not only did the hackathon helped me with my coding skills but I was able to make new friends from different parts of the city. I plan on going to more hackathons in the future because of the many different types of people I am able to work with in creating a project and the new knowledge I am able to gain from different people that could benefit me in the future to come. I recommend others to go to a hackathon if they haven’t attended one because it’s an unique experience that can help them in the future.
The Demon Hack was held at DePaul University and was a great experience for all of us. It was attended by numerous CS seeking/pursuing students in Chicago and it was exciting to see so many aspiring people trying to apply CS to real world problems. The hackathon started off by several groups using their knowledge to develop a code/app that helped in solving the issue. The theme of the hackathon was transportation hence our group decided to help users be more aware of the timings of CTA trains and buses by accessing their events in their google calendar. Therefore, with the help of this tool users can be more aware of the departures and arrivals of their medium of transportation. Similarly, several groups chose other topics to work on all related to transportation.
It was a great learning experience for everyone in our team although it was not successful. It taught us how we can apply CS to real life problems like this. This hackathon made me explore more about such problems and how they can be solved and all the participants were extremely motivated and inspired by the end of the competition to explore more and learn more concepts that could be used to solve such problems. Despite the fact that we spent almost the whole day at the hackathon working, we all thoroughly enjoyed and it was a fresh and new environment for us which kept us going on.
I attended Demonhacks mid October and it was my first ever hackathon ever. I was amazed by the grandeur of the event. There were massive companies like chase that were there looking for potentially employees and students with promise. Having little to no experience coding, I found the task given to me seemingly impossible even though the website advertised the event is “extremely beginner friendly.” To build an app in a single day? The day before i attended the event, we were learning how to construct the most basic of methods and yet they expected a fully functional app by the end of 24 hours. The entire experience however, was not a complete anxiety attack. I picked up some android app designing techniques and a very brief understanding of react which could hardly get me anywhere. The night showed me that there are multiple layers to coding it is not just one dimensional. There is back end and front end and both need to come together to form the app. This cramming did come with a cost however. I started to feel manipulated and exploited by large companies as we were handing them over an entire application and intellectual property for a mere chance of getting crumbs or even less than those whom they would pay to do the same while experiencing inhumane hours of labor that were enabled by the event. I am unsure about whether or not I will attend another hackathon due to the blatant misleading advertisement and the fact that i felt exploited by large companies. I assumed very beginner friendly would actually be beginner friendly but it was not. My friends and I were completely lost and defeated for a majority of the 24 hours of labor and it added a huge amount of stress for no reward other than a participation applause.
I chose to attend the Demonhacks hackathon. This was my first ever hackathon, so I was nervous going into it. Fortunately, ACM was also attending so I was able to meet up with them first. I was mostly nervous because I don’t know much about coding. I was worried I wouldn’t be of much use to my team members; however, they were extremely kind and understanding.
My team chose to build a webpage using Google Maps and the CTA API. I had no experience building a web page, so one of my biggest takeaways is playing around with Angular. I was also able to get a lot of practice with using terminal, which I was not familiar with going into the event. I also attended a talk on Github because I have not used that before either. I am happy to say I feel slightly familiar with the platform now.
I feel the hackathon showed me a lot of different aspects of computer science. I am only familiar with Java, but I was also able to see many coders using Python and C++. It also showed me that computer science takes a lot of research, understanding, and testing. The grad students I was working with were constantly on Google and Youtube in order to understand how to implement the API. There was also a lot of collaboration among our team members as we all made different discoveries. We used the webpage as a tester because we weren’t sure we could get the API to work at all. We started with the bus tracker, with plans to continue with the train tracker if all went well.
I would definitely do something like this again because I enjoyed being further integrated into the world of computer science and programming. I feel like it is worth the extra practice and experience.
This weekend I attended DeamonHacks at Depaul. Previously, I had only attended one Hackathon, however, It was only 10 hours and I was 14 years old and did not know anything about CS or coding. For this Hackathon, I was very excited because it was my first Hackathon that was 26 hours and I knew friends who were going. There were so many students from all over Chicago and from out of state. It was really cool how so many people would dedicate so much time to come together for one competition. The announced that the theme of Deamonhacks was public transportation. With our team of four, we spent an hour deciding what to do. We finally decided to make a system that tracks the available capacity on each cart of a train on the CTA. We built the backend with Java to find the range of available capacity and then we sent that data to our MySQL database. Then we made a website that would take that data and display it to the user. This Hackathon helped me learn how back-end and front-end development connect. I was able to learn enough MySQL in 26 hours to make a working system. I will definitely be attending another Hackathon in the future.
I decided to go to DePaul’s Demon Hacks as my first ever hackathon. I was slightly nervous going in since I have not programmed much outside of a classroom setting and had no idea as to what we were going to program. I went in expecting to be not very useful to my team, but this wasn’t the case.
It was very interesting seeing computer science being applied to a real-world problem; public transportation in this case. Spending time with my team to discuss how to use computer science to resolve actual situations was a very enriching experience as it made me realize how applicable programming is everywhere. My team decided to make a phone app that would access a user’s google calendar and then give reminders when a CTA train or bus would leave at times that corresponded with the user’s schedule.
As a result, I got to learn how to make an android app using Java. I had only ever made phone apps using code-block languages before, so learning how apps work with a detailed language like Java was fascinating.
Although my team did not develop our app as far as we had hoped, I stilled learned a great amount of new skills. I also found it interesting seeing how other teams approached the topic and what languages they used. I was surprised by how popular Python was since I had previously thought the language was intended purely for educational purposes and not real-world applications.
Overall, I learned a great deal more than I was expecting to by attending a hackathon and will very much consider attending more in the future.
Over last weekend, I attended DemonHacks with other students I knew. I was excited because I heard about the experience that some friends had at the Paypal hackathon the previous weekends. I’ve never been to another hackathon so I was ready to see what it was like, firsthand. I was fortunate to have a team set up before I arrived because I had enough friends to go with. When I arrived, I got to meet sponsors like JPMorgan, Brooksource, and Aquatic. Hearing about what they were looking for in students intrigued me. When the topic for this hackathon was released (public transit and social good) my team and I got to work; Our plan was to create a reward system app that awards points to people for using the CTA that can be redeemed for a free ride for themselves and another for someone who needs it. I learned a lot about how to plan a functional application, the work that goes into creating an app (front-end and back-end development has to work together), got through the process of getting stuck and overcoming issues in writing programs,and how Git is used for a team to develop a functional product. Everything was programmed in java since that was what our team was best at. We didn’t place in the award ceremony, but heard a lot of positive comments from other teams and judges. Lynn was in one of the other teams we knew, and it was cool to meet up every now and then during the weekend so that we can take time to relax and talk about our struggles. Overall, we were happy with what we learned and were able to create in the time we had. I will definitely go to more hackathons!
This weekend I attended the DemonHacks hackathon at DePaul. Going in, I felt a little intimidated since I did not have an idea or a team, but I quickly found a team and we started brainstorming ideas. There were many students from in and out of state, so it was nice to meet new people. Our team decided to do the social good theme sponsored by JPMorgan, and we decided to make an app that enables people in areas to post “one-time” jobs, such as getting your lawn cut, basic maintenance, etc. It is a win-win because it helps people get those jobs done (at their asking price too!) and helps those who may be unemployed or looking for some quick cash to earn some money and possibly sustain a career they may be pursuing.
We decided to make the app a mobile-app made in React Native since the UI was strongly coupled with the logic of the app. The idea was to make the app account-based, where each account represented as a model in our code would have a rating, username, age, and other data associated with it. Originally we were planning to have a backend NodeJS API server interact with a PostgreSQL db instance so that we could make the account system work and let other data persist, but after quite a bit of time we observed that the depaul network seemed to not allow connections to services that were not on default ports (both internally on the network and externally). This was a problem because if we wanted to either:
a.) directly interact with the remote database
b.) let the local API server interact with the database
..neither of those would be possible due to that limitation. This is because if the API server was hosted locally, the mobile device would not be able to interact over the network with the API server. Also, in development mode, the mobile device downloads the javascript bundle over the network from the dev server. This was not possible either, but luckily the dev server had an option to tunnel the request, so we were able to use that despite the issues it did inevitably have (i.e. transfer speed of the bundle over the tunnel).
So the remaining option was just to do everything related to the remote database (even in development mode) through a remote API server. That was not ideal considering again we were in development mode (deploying after every change), and the limited amount of time we had.
Something new I did learn though when we attempted to make the API server was how we were going to transfer the data. The API server would send raw JSON to our application, and the app could serialize the JSON (quite easily seeing as we were writing it in javascript) into an object that would reflect an instance of an explicit model in our application.
So we scratched the idea of a backend and instead just had static sample data our app would load in. This also limited us to remove all features of the app that would post any data since that data would have to be on the database. However, we still made the interface for posting jobs, we just made it do nothing when you submitted it. All after all, the app boiled down to 3 main functions: searching for users sorted by rating, searching for jobs sorted by most recent, and the UI to post jobs.
At the project expo, it was very interesting to see what other people had created in such a short amount of time. The projects were very diverse and everyone was passionate about the hard work they had done in the past 24 hours. It helped me learn more about Computer Science because we got to apply what we learned in our courses into a functional application that serves to solve a real problem. I would like to go to an activity like this again, but preferably with more time and what constraints there are told to us ahead of time (i.e. the network constraints).
This past weekend, I attended the Demonhacks Hackathon at Depaul University. It was my first hackathon and is definitely not going to be my last. Coming into the hackathon, my expectations were kind of uncertain. If anything, I thought I was about to go into a huge convention with high tech equipment everywhere. In reality, it had more of a camping vibe to it. You are stuck in a room in a building with no windows where you eat, sleep, and code. I knew I was going to be pretty behind in coding compared to other people competing considering my lack of skills but the gap was way bigger. My group and I worked on a mobile app to employ people to work one time jobs, such as it works sort of like uber. To do this, I had to learn javascript, React Native, and GitHub from scratch. It was pretty difficult and we made our app with minimal resources. So you can only imagine how many new things I learned in that 24 hour period. This hackathon taught me how to code in different ways and collaborate with others to make functions within the app. There is no doubt I would do something like this in the future. Not anytime near because I need to take a huge step forward if anything but the whole hackathon as a whole was enjoyable. I was more interested in seeing other people’s ideas and creativity as the event went on.
Going into DemonHacks 2019, I was quite nervous. For one, I didn’t know what to expect, as this was my first hackathon. I also didn’t see how I could apply what I know about object-oriented programming to create a solution to a specific category of issues. My group consisted of 4 freshman undergraduates from IIT. We struggled to not only come up with an idea but also create an idea that we could realistically deploy with our collective, not-so-vast knowledge in the allotted time. In the end, we failed to create our idea in time. However, despite this failure, I still feel that hackathons are a low-risk environment for any person to apply their knowledge in many meaningful ways. At DemonHacks, there were “Tech Talks” that gave us insight into a variety of topics. One of them, called “Git Gud,” introduced GitHub and taught me the basics of how to use it. In the process of creating our idea, I also learned about basic hardware devices such as Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. DemonHacks also provided a first-hand experience of what a career in computer science would be like, with strict 24-hour deadlines and collaborations with others on a project. I’d love to attend another hackathon when I get more experience so that I could actually contribute to a group with my coding experience.
Last week, I attended the Demonhack hackathon at DePaul University. I’ve never participated before in such hackathon, so it was my 1st hackathon ever. I was very scared to go there because I’m a freshmen student and I didn’t know anyone there, but my expectation was very high. It is because I was expecting to learn something new which can be very useful for my study and career as well. There were many students from different college of Chicago. After getting there, we were divided into different groups and they gave us a theme of event which was public transportation. So, all of us from our group were working and dedicating our skills on theme for the competition. We spent many hours on coding. Since we all were freshmen, it was difficult for us to getting into the theme. But we took help from resources, asked seniors for some help, and we were able to make a system which can show us the availability of seats on transport.
Also, from that 26 hours of hackathon, I learned some more coding of Javascript, and GitHub which I have never heard before. GitHub is used to control system because it stores file change more efficiently and ensures file integrity better. This hackathon taught me many things. So, I look forward to attending such events more in future.
As DemonHacks was the first Hackathon I have ever attended, I was quite excited to join it. Although, I feel that I couldn’t contribute to my group as much as I was supposed to, which is inevitable as I have only started to learn programming this year. Will I join other Hackathons? Yes, of course: the next one is only a week away.
We joined DemonHacks as a group of five, all freshman. The main topic was Public Transit, and the sponsors had challenges for us. JP Morgan Chase was one of them, they wanted a project about social help. So, we decided to make a project that fulfills both of them. We decided to help high school children with their transportation fees, while maintaining the company profits.
We named our project PandaPoints. It is a mobile app that tracks down the times you have ridden the CTA train, and gives you Panda points for each ride. Once you reach a certain point, it rewards you with a free ticket. In addition to that, the company donates another free ticket to a donation pool from which high school students can benefit.
It was reasonable to break down the problem and give each member different aspect of the project. I took the front-end part of it, and also made calculations to make sure that the company will not lose its profits in the process.
I learned the rough draft of a server in this period. I really enjoyed how we make connections between classes and data. Although we couldn’t implement the codes into the server during DemonHacks, I hope we will complete it in the next one.
Over the weekend I attended my first-ever hackathon at Demonhacks. I am fairly new to cs so I did not know what to expect. Fortunately for me, I went with my friends who had experience. I was fairly nervous because I knew that I was most likely the only one who did not have any experience. When we started we did not have many ideas. My group and I came up with the idea of a loyalty rewards system for the CTA. We wanted to reward the people for using public transit and help others in need as well. The first thing we had to focus on was who to give the passes too. We made it so highschool students would get the free passes because they have an ID that is with the Chicago public school system. Our main goal was to promote the use of public transit but to also give back to the students who do not have ventra passes such as college students. We created a system gave points to people every time they scanned their ventra cards on the CTA’s. Every consecutive day they scanned it, the person would earn the points faster. All of our code was java and we also used android studio to make a demo. Although we did not win anything this was a great experience for me and I am most likely going to attend Demonhacks in the following year.
DemonHacks was the first hackathon I’ve gone to, and it will most likely be my last for a while. I wasn’t exactly sure what a hackathon was so I was was rightfully nervous. I also had no clue who else was going nor did I have an idea of what were the things a hackathon has to offer. However after attending the 26-hour hackathon, I realized something that I’ve always heard, but never really observed, and that is: anything I learned going to school was almost unusable at the hackathon. This was certainly a surprise because I felt useless for my team and I felt I was just wasting my time sitting there doing nothing. I did learn how to (somewhat) use Git, but even then it was only an hour presentation. The most useful thing for me was talking to some of the ACM members and learning about different software and frameworks can be used to make a final product. In the future I will most likely not attend an activity like this unless my coding skills increase dramatically or I already have a team of friends and we all go together. The best part about the hackathon was obviously the food for we had constant access to all type of snacks and drinks.
The past weekend I had the opportunity to try out on my first ever Hackathons, the DemonHacks at DePaul University. I had never experienced anything like that before so I didn’t really know what to do or to expect. The topic was on public transit and my team, after a long while finally came up with an idea fascinating enough to build something from it. We got to fiddle with many different API, I got the chance to try out some Android app making and emulators, seeing many coders there with much more knowledge on many other languages is pretty cool. ACM was especially nice to us, they were willing to help when there was something that didn’t work with the IDE or the basic things that many us freshman didn’t have too much experience with yet. overall, seeing the products and the amazing idea at the end of day 2 was what the experience overall, even though our idea didn’t come to a finished product, I’d gladly try out for something like a hackathon again.
Last weekend I attended my second hackathon ever. The theme was public transportation and social good. My team decided to make our project around both topics, including an adorable panda mascot. The app was called Panda Points. Our app was a rewards system for riding the CTA. Each time a passenger tapped into the train they were rewarded points that would add up to a free ride. The more days they rode consecutively, the more points they received. When they got a free ride they would additionally donate one to a high school student in Chicago. The student could obtain this free ride by demonstrating their high school ID at the station. This would promote use of the train and help students get to school. I worked with Android Studio to make a demo of what the app would look like. It included a log in screen, the home page, your account information, history and settings page. Although we never connected the front end to the backend code, I was very happy with our work. I enjoyed showing the judges the demo and they mostly all agreed it was a good idea. They really liked the panda. I had a great experience at this hackathon and cannot wait to learn more in the next one I attend.
Last weekend I attended the DemonHacks hackathon at Depaul University. It was my first time ever going a hackathon, so you can imagine that there was a lot I didn’t expect. At first I was anxious since I had little experience in programming. I was worried I would become a detriment to the team I was put in. However, Demonhacks was not lying when they said the event was beginner-friendly. The people I was with were amiable and patient, not to mention a few were from outside the United States, so I was able to hear their interesting anecdotes on why they decided to pursue computer science. Public transit was the topic of focus of the hackathon, so my team and I developed an app that would alert people sleeping or preoccupied on a bus or train that their destination was close. Our team made use of Android Studio to develop the application from scratch. It was interesting to know that basic app development can be done using a program like Android Studio; I was always under the impression that there was more to it than that. One major take-away from the event was my exposure to Git and Github, and how it makes coordination between developers significantly easier. During the panel showcase, the judges liked the idea and thought it showed great potential should the application be expanded upon. Overall, my first ever hackathon was such an unforgettable experience, so much so that I am inclined to attend more in the future.
Last weekend, I attended my first-ever hackathon, Demonhacks 2019. I had had a lot of insecurities before the event, mostly because I haven’t attended anything like this before, and I had so many Homeworks due and midterms the following week that I couldn’t entirely focus on preparing for the hackathon. After 24 hours of hacking, although our team wasn’t able to turn our ideas into a finished product, I did learn a lot about how to use different tools and APIs, specifically the Git, Github (thanks to the one-hour informative tech talk) and mobile app making tools like Android studio and flutter. The theme “public transit” was really cool, and we got to hear ideas from different people. The food is really good. I had my first deep dish pizza there, which shows that I am also learning about some of Chicago’s culture and cuisine as an international student. The ACM and mentors there were really friendly and helpful. Without them, we wouldn’t have any clue what to do with our idea. That seems to show that I personally have so much to learn to actually contribute to society as a computer science major. Because of that, I would love to attend another hackathon to learn more, but not so soon, at least until I am confident enough about my skills that I can make the most of my time there or my friends invite me to attend another one.
I attended to the Demon Hackathon at Depaul University. Before attending this hackathon I was nervous and somewhat excited because I did not know what to expect. I thought that most people in the event were going to be experts and better than me. However, I formed my team previous of going to the event with some of my friends that go to Depaul, and had some comfort knowing that I was not going to be all alone.
The hackathon was an interesting experience to say the least. I did not know if I was going to be able to help my teammates with the problems presented. I learned about the process of taking a problem and using Git and javascript to solve it. The constant persistence trying to figure out many problems throughout the day was difficult and something I valued after going to the event.
This activity helped me understand more about the different types of languages such as C++. At the beginning of the hackathon I did not have much knowledge about the specific types of programming languages. However, as the day kept going from my teammates I began to understand more each concept. Also, I observed how my teammates interacted with the API to make the application better.
I would definitely consider attending another hackathon again. Even if at times the problem appear to be complex to solve, the experience of having to work with other people all having the same goal was fun. Also, hearing the experiences from other students at the event was great. Overall, it was a great weekend coding with friends.
This past weekend, I attended the Demonhacks Hackathon at Depaul University. Since this was my very first hackathon, I really did not know what to expect. I just had the most vague idea from how other people described it, you group up with other people, you are given a topic, and you have a whole day to create or program something relating to the topic. However, the idea of creating something from nothing with your ideas, within 24 hours actually got me very excited. With my current knowledge of programming and performance in my current CS classes, I thought that I had a good chance of performing well during the programming part. But was I ever more wrong. My group decided to create an app that connects people with simple one time jobs. With this idea, I had to learn a new interface, react native, and also learn 2 new programming languages, javascript and CSS. So with the already limited time we had, I had to educate myself with completely new things just to contribute to the team. It took us about 7 hours to learn the material and get the interface ready to use, after that remained the most stressful 17 hours of my life. We pulled through and completed our project, but this experience taught the importance of teamwork in the field of Computer Science. In the real world applications, if one person slacks off or doesn’t finish their part, the whole program would not work and could lead to bad terms with your group partners and future employers.
I enjoyed this experience very much and would go to more because it gave me the best representation of working in the field of computer science in this point of my education.
Last weekend, I went to the DemonHacks Hackathon downtown at Depaul University. This was my first hackathon so I did not know what exactly to expect. I assumed we would be building either a program, website, or something physical, like a robot. Instead, my team ended up building a phone app. There were two themes at the hackathon. The first one was “public transportation.” We decided not to focus on this theme; it seemed like all of the ideas our team was coming up with had already been done already. For example, a lot of our ideas revolved around new ways to track buses and trains, but we later realized that there is not much need for another tracker app, since the city already has one that works well enough. All of the good ideas were too complicated, considering this the first hackathon any of us had attended, and all of the practical ideas were not worth doing. We decided to go with second theme, which was “social good.” The purpose of our app was for poor people and/or teenagers to find simple, one-time jobs to make a “quick buck.” One of the biggest things I learned is that, when trying to create anything, half of the battle is getting the environment working. Before our group could get any real work done, we spent at least two hours installing random things on our computers and making sure they worked properly. It is honestly really frustrating, especially when you start having problems before you even truly start working. Would I attend something like this again? I would eventually, but not at any time in the near future. I would like to have a better understanding of what I am doing and perhaps have a few more “tools” in my belt before I would go again. I assume sometime around my junior year I will try again.
I felt nervous and excited about going to the DemonHacks hackathon at DePaul University before actually attending it. My nervousness came from the fact that I have never been to a hackathon before and am not completely confident in my programming skills using Java. As for my excitement, that originated from my desire to try out something new. Hopefully I am much more prepared for the next hackathon I attend. At one of the Tech Talks hosted at DemonHacks centered around Personal and Application Security, I learned about OWASP which stands for Open Web Application Security Project and is a 501(c)(3) worldwide not-for-profit organization focused on improving the security of software. I would go to another activity like this again because I had a really good overall experience and there was plenty of free food throughout the whole hackathon. I liked how the whole hackathon schedule was organized into many different activities such as Tech talks instead of being exclusively hacking which gave it much variety and enjoyability. I enjoyed the chance I got to meet other students and to visit another university. The DePaul staff managing the hackathon were nothing short of helpful and kind and the CDM building was a clean environment to be in.
I had heard about Hackthons before from books, magazines and TV. I instantly thought of the movie the Social Network and as a result, my impression was one that a of bunch of really smart programmers who came together and “hacked” while not sleeping for 24+ hours. Being a freshman, I also went in overwhelmed by the fact that my only CS experience has so far been from intro to java classes in highschool and college. However, my expectations were pleasantly subverted when I learnt there that participating in a Hackathon comprised of many different non CS related factors such as idea design and logistics. Sure, knowing how to fully facilitate an idea into life required considerable practical coding knowledge, but I was lucklily able to form a team with 2 people who had already graduated with a CS degree. It was an exhilarilating experience, as we brainstormed and went thru atleast 20 iterations of the same idea. We ran out of time at the end and although we didnt have nowhere near a functioning product, the amount of work we had gotten done was gratifying. I got to learn and experiment with the Android Studio for the first time, and also got to see aspects of data science such as machine learning applied in a personal project for the first time. I now realize that I had witnessesed what is a vital component of a computer science: that experimenting and learning new things(new languages, APIs) on a regular basis is a neccessary aspect of completing the job. Even my team mates who weren’t familiar with android studio worked hard and had to brush up on their Java. I look forward on catching another Hackathon in the future, and hopefully aware of my past experience, be able to contribute on a greater level.
Demonhacks was definitely a new experience for me since this was my first hackathon. Going into the hackathon, I knew I wasn’t going to win mainly because I currently only know Java, so I really just came to learn, but then again learning is winning. Win or lose, it was a win-win situation. The hackathon was advertised as “beginner friendly”, so I thought why not. I really hope they stop saying it is “beginner friendly” because it is really not. This just doesn’t go for this hackathon, but others that say the similar message. I soon came to realize that React is a trending language right now, so there’s a new language for me to learn right after I learn HTML and javascript. Almost everyone I talked to used React within their project in some way. As for future hackathons, I definitely wouldn’t mind coming to another one, it just wouldn’t be much of a priority. I just feel as if there is more and better things to do than hackathons like building a side project to add onto your portfolio. Not only do I feel that there is more, but I just don’t like the idea that these hackathon promoters are encouraging unhealthy habits that only makes the programming or “hacking” culture look bad. While this was my first hackathon, I’ll keep an open-mind for future hackathons.
DeamonHacks at DePaul was the first hackathon I have ever attended. I must admit, before I even decided to sign up, I was unsure if I would like staying overnight just working on some random problem that we would be given to us. I believed it was going to be the same stuff that we were doing during class. However, after finding a team of friends, I realized that we had more liberty to do what we wanted to do. I have worked in collaboration with others in reaching an ultimate goal but it never heavily revolved around software; this quickly turned into an exciting project. The main theme given to us was public transportation. My team and I, at the time, did not realize that this was only one of the suggested themes that we could focus on. On retrospect, this was actually good for us as we only focused on covering one theme instead of overwhelming ourselves with all of them. Nevertheless, once the mentors dismissed us, we went to work on deciding a problem and solving it. The dynamic my team had was like second nature, two of us worked back end and the other two worked front. I worked on pushing data from a Java back end to a local MySQL database. I had never done anything like this before which is why in the end it was nice to see that it was all working as intended. Experiencing my first Hackathon has definitely made me consider attending another one.
I attended DemonHacks hosted by Depaul University last weekend. As it was my first hackathon, I felt incredibly tense and nervous, but as my team formed, I began to feel more comfortable. My only extracurricular coding experience comes from being on a FIRST robotics team. The only language I knew was java but I had been using it to program for two years. Our hack was to create a weight-based capacity tracker system that would measure the number of people on a single train car and display that information onto a website. While working on our solution, we began to realize that our hack couldn’t be created with only Java. We ended up collectively using 5 different languages to create our solution and upload it onto a website. Personally, I learned new aspects and uses of Java and learned basic HTML and CSS. My responsibility for my team was to assist in making a back-end java program that would output data into a database, which would then be moved onto the website. This experience has given me insight as to what a career in computer science may entail in the future as well as the skills and attributes necessary to be able to perform well in any given computer science-related career. In the future, I hope to attend more hackathons so I may better understand the different aspects of computer science as well as potential niches I may be able to fill in the professi0onal world.
I attended DemonHacks as my first ever hackathon. I was nervous at first because I didn’t know what to expect, but after arriving and starting the event, my nerves went away. I got to meet many other students from universities all around Chicago and from all across the midwest. My team and I took part in all three challenges that were available at the hackathon. As opposed to the traditional classroom setting, we had to create a back end code base and a front end user interface. We also had to present our project to judges and explain all of its functionality thoroughly. That experience will definitely help me become more conscious of creating a good front end experience that a user will appreciate as well as a functional and efficient back end that will help my software function to the best of its ability. The event overall was great and was a fantastic learning experience. The staff at the event were very kind and professional and the building was a great environment. I would definitely attend another hackathon again and, in fact, I’ve already registered for and will be attending VandyHacks at Vanderbilt, and I’m looking forward to working with another group of people on another great project.
I attended the DePaul Hackathon last week Saturday through Sunday. I felt unsure about the event as I was very new to Hackathons and everyone around me seemed to know what they were doing so It intimidated me a bit. I attended this event with my friend and my TA for my CS115 class. We were paired in groups that were random according to what applications and program languages you liked if you did not have a group prior to the event. The event itself consisted of many people from different universities and institutions all over the US so it was great interacting with them and learn their lifestyle back home. Most of the people that were next to my group were upperclassmen, some even Seniors so they had a lot of experience when it came to creating an app for CTA public transit and how to make it better, although it was a broad topic. Further in the event they had some guest speakers who introduced GitHub and pretty cool features on it as well such as collaborating on each others classes and projects. There was a different guest speaker who spoke about encryption code on passwords and how easy it may be for hackers to access them. The guest speaker also went over some of the topics that we had already talked about in our CS100 lecture. Overall, it was a great experience for me as it gave me a different idea on what Hackathons were all about and I’ll be sure to prepare for the next one!
Before attending DemonHacks, I have never before attended an activity where I implement my knowledge of coding to develop a certain product. Each day as DemonHacks crept closer and closer, I felt more of an urge to just not go. However, I’m glad I did go. As a freshman majoring in computer science, I was not at all confident in my programming skills, especially since I have so much more to learn. I formed a group with a couple of my friends that attend DePaul University. Since we were all pretty new to coding, we decided to start our product small and finish big (We did not finish big). As the theme was public transit, we were hoping to create a certain kind of app (more of a game) that would consist of a train (the moving object), which got bigger the more passengers that got inside it (literally a snake game). In my personal opinion, I enjoyed this hackathon more for the experience rather than the actual programming as I was introduced to a lot of new information. Since my friends at DePaul were more used to languages such as JavaScript, we decided to create our game in that language. This Hackathon helped me learn additional programming skills in languages that I had just a tad bit of knowledge on. I really enjoyed talking with the sponsors and job recruiters as helped me understand how my life in computer science would look like after graduating. To conclude, It is very likely for me to attend an activity like this again in the future. I am very passionate about the field of entrepreneurship involving computer science, as there is so much potential there. However, before I attend another hackathon, I will need to learn much more, as next time, I plan to win.
On october 19, I attended my first hackathon. DemonHacks was my first ever hackathon that I ever attended. As an amateur coder going there by myself was very nerve wrecking because I didn’t know anyone going there and also my coding skills were not as experience as that many people going there. But the people at the hackathon made my experience enjoyable. The reason why is because a random group asked if I wanted to join them in helping them create an app for the competition. I made it clear to them that I was a beginner and was not very experience in coding apps. It didn’t matter to them because they made sure that I was able to help them in other ways and to teach me certain things about creating apps that will I can benefit from in the future. Through the project I was able to increase my knowledge of both java and javascript and how they are used in creating apps. And I was introduce to GitHub, which I have heard of it but never bother looking at. So it was my first time creating an account on GitHub and my team showed me how GitHub worked and the different codes that people have in there show others. Not only did the hackathon helped me with my coding skills but I was able to make new friends from different parts of the city. I plan on going to more hackathons in the future because of the many different types of people I am able to work with in creating a project and the new knowledge I am able to gain from different people that could benefit me in the future to come. I recommend others to go to a hackathon if they haven’t attended one because it’s an unique experience that can help them in the future.
The Demon Hack was held at DePaul University and was a great experience for all of us. It was attended by numerous CS seeking/pursuing students in Chicago and it was exciting to see so many aspiring people trying to apply CS to real world problems. The hackathon started off by several groups using their knowledge to develop a code/app that helped in solving the issue. The theme of the hackathon was transportation hence our group decided to help users be more aware of the timings of CTA trains and buses by accessing their events in their google calendar. Therefore, with the help of this tool users can be more aware of the departures and arrivals of their medium of transportation. Similarly, several groups chose other topics to work on all related to transportation.
It was a great learning experience for everyone in our team although it was not successful. It taught us how we can apply CS to real life problems like this. This hackathon made me explore more about such problems and how they can be solved and all the participants were extremely motivated and inspired by the end of the competition to explore more and learn more concepts that could be used to solve such problems. Despite the fact that we spent almost the whole day at the hackathon working, we all thoroughly enjoyed and it was a fresh and new environment for us which kept us going on.
I attended Demonhacks mid October and it was my first ever hackathon ever. I was amazed by the grandeur of the event. There were massive companies like chase that were there looking for potentially employees and students with promise. Having little to no experience coding, I found the task given to me seemingly impossible even though the website advertised the event is “extremely beginner friendly.” To build an app in a single day? The day before i attended the event, we were learning how to construct the most basic of methods and yet they expected a fully functional app by the end of 24 hours. The entire experience however, was not a complete anxiety attack. I picked up some android app designing techniques and a very brief understanding of react which could hardly get me anywhere. The night showed me that there are multiple layers to coding it is not just one dimensional. There is back end and front end and both need to come together to form the app. This cramming did come with a cost however. I started to feel manipulated and exploited by large companies as we were handing them over an entire application and intellectual property for a mere chance of getting crumbs or even less than those whom they would pay to do the same while experiencing inhumane hours of labor that were enabled by the event. I am unsure about whether or not I will attend another hackathon due to the blatant misleading advertisement and the fact that i felt exploited by large companies. I assumed very beginner friendly would actually be beginner friendly but it was not. My friends and I were completely lost and defeated for a majority of the 24 hours of labor and it added a huge amount of stress for no reward other than a participation applause.