A Maddening Hack

My hands flew across the keyboard like a hummingbird flapping its wings; there was a peculiar beauty behind the maddening speed. I continued to churn out line after line of code. There was no tomorrow.  Occasionally, I would nervously glance over at our rivals. No one thought it would come down to the wire, but yet here we were head-to-head within reaching distance of the finish line. Every single second mattered.

A week before I suggested to a friend who was looking for jobs that he could apply to EA Games. While browsing the EA games website, I saw a link to some event I had not heard of before called “Hackathon Escape from /dev/null“. I found out that it’s a programming competition where each team (up to 3 people) would need to solve a series of programming challenges. I knew I needed to go. Putting together a dream team was easy since I am friends with some amazing programmers. With a little persuasion, I brought on board my friends and coworkers of MokaFive, Mark and Robbie.

The morning of the competition, we arrived at the impressive EA campus and learned about what was expected of us. We would be programming nonstop for the entire day and would use Python along with Crea’s engine. We were facing against 18~ other teams, and being in Silicon Valley, we knew the competition would be fierce. Mark, Rob and I believed that we almost certainly would not win. All we really wanted out of the competition was to hang out and have some fun. Oh, and I was on a mission to win a copy of the new SimCity for Kelley (wife).

We assembled in a large room, set up our laptops and cracked our knuckles. As soon as the flag went up, the team sitting at the table to our side sped ahead of everyone else. They were on the fifth challenge before half of the teams were done with the second. They quickly began to stack up small prizes and had a half dozen mini photo ops. How were they moving so fast? I had no time to seek the answer. I had hacking to do!

Blurry cell phone pic by Kelley

Mark, Rob and I began to fall behind the other teams. We were not fully prepared and at first resisted hacking things together, meaning sacrificing all structural integrity for immediate functionality. We said things like “Oh man, this is such a hack,” or “Don’t look at this!” These comments subsided once we realized we would have to fully embrace them. We had to become one with the hack if we were to stand a chance to win. This is when we learned the true meaning of a “hackathon”.

Time flew by and the day was a giant stream of colored text. Lunch was announced and by the time I managed to peel myself away from the computer, two hours later, what little was left of lunch was being put away. I fortunately managed to scrounge some food from the backroom and scurried back to the comfort of my laptop warm glow.

Mark and Robbie put together a great little Python engine run by the command line to perform most required actions while I worked on displaying the graphical data with Crea’s engine. We began to gain momentum. At one point we answered 4 out of the 16 challenges within 10 minutes. We entered the home stretch, but the leading team was already on the final challenge. We were closing in on them and you could feel the tension in the air.

Robbie worked his magic and within 15 minutes we had an answer to the second-to-last challenge. We looked around for a judge, but they were all crowded around the leading team. They must have had an answer for the final challenge. I was a little disappointed; we were so close! I thought, “oh well, even though it was stressful at the beginning, this event ended up being a lot of fun. I’m glad I came.”

Gameboard at the end. Each node represents a challenge.

But wait! The leading team didn’t fully solve the challenge. It was still on! We grabbed a judge and were moved onto the final challenge. Robbie and Mark began to work out the problem on paper while I continued to hack away. For a brief moment I felt myself enter a state of zen – like Neo at the end of the Matrix. Time and space warped around me as I frantically worked on a solution. Almost immediately I was calling for a judge. Robbie and Mark said “What? Already?” in amazement. But, much like the other team, we soon discovered that we hadn’t fully answered the challenge.

Approach after approach was made as we feverishly worked towards the real solution. A few minutes later, the winning team was displayed on the projector. We had won! Astonishment and disbelief swept over us. We were congratulated, presented our prizes and even interviewed. Although we had been programming for 12 hours straight, it all happened so quickly! I can still hardly believe it.

Prizes: SimCity, Crysis 3, Dead Space 3, and $1000. Everyone got a cool hackathon shirt.

Best of all, my mission was successful! Kelley is playing SimCity at this very moment!

I want to thank Peter Svensson for organizing this great event and EA for hosting! I can hardly wait for the next one!