Competitive programming and coding has only grown in popularity over the past twenty some-odd years and given students a way to show off not only what they are capable of doing, but also share amazing projects with the world. At this point there is even the Major League Hacking group for students to join and be a part of these large events and conventions! While competitive, the community is actually quite open and supportive. It’s free for anyone to attend, and one doesn’t even have to be a programmer to enjoy the projects produced; the competitors backgrounds vary in skill level and age only making the entire convention seem that much more welcoming.

How did it all start?

Most see competitive programming starting from OpenBSD, which is a group of programmers who made the free open-source OS of the same name. As the company started to throw their own small events, the meet ups got their name from Niels Provos as “hackathons.” The group would set up complex problems to be solved in specific programming languages, or difficult numeric questions to be answered with algorithms. Everything was limited due to the time frame, computer processing speed, and the lack of frameworks to easily structure sites (such as Ruby Rails debuting in 2004). Therefore, projects ended up moving slowly, and the challenges would sometimes last a full 24 hours with teams taking shifts (… or not).

#programming #coding #hackathons