Can you code 24 hours non-stop? Hackontest is a new Google-sponsored 24-hour programming competition between different open source projects. Its goals are to enhance Free Software projects according to user needs and to make visible how enthusiastically open source software is being developed.
During the current online selection process users and developers of open source software may submit feature requests and rate and comment them. On August 1st, 2008 the Hackontest jury will pick the three most promising teams. Each team will receive a free trip to Switzerland on September 24/25, 2008 to participate in the competition located in Zurich. Hacking 24 hours inside an etoy.CONTAINER, the teams and their virtually present communities will implement certain features based on the online ratings and jury selection. In the end, the Hackontest jury evaluates the code and awards the winners with a total of USD 8500. The jury is made up of 10 renowned open source contributors: Jeremy Alison (Samba), Jono Bacon (Ubuntu), Brian W. Fitzpatrick (Subversion), Martin F. Krafft (Debian), Alexander Limi (Plone), Federico Mena-Quintero (GNOME), Bram Moolenaar (vim), Bruce Perens (OSI founder), Lukas K. Smith (PHP) and Harald Welte (gpl-violations.org).
I’ve added Blender to the list of potential projects, if there is an interesting feature that could be implemented by a team of three highly talented blender coders in a 24 hour period you might want to submit the idea for consideration, also if you are a talented blender coder, you might consider tossing your hat in the ring for working on it.
LetterRip”
Can you code 24 hours non-stop? Hackontest is a new Google-sponsored 24-hour programming competition between different open source projects. Its goals are to enhance Free Software projects according to user needs and to make visible how enthusiastically open source software is being developed.
Non=stop? 24 hours? Hmmmmm…. Maybe i dont like the idea because I just woke up from glorious sleep… lol.
Wonder what projects will be picked…
24hours non-stop work? This is exactly the sort of stigma software developers are trying to get away from. Coding is a creative process, sitting someone down and give them 24hours to crank up a product is probably not going to go too well.
Decent idea. Terrible execution. GSoC is a much better strategy.
Well, this is probably very different but 24-hour film contests seem to have a similar sort of vibe. Just as coding is a creative process, filmmaking too takes a lot of time and dedication to do well and 24 hours is basically, you know, a ridiculous challenge…
Oh, I forgot my point. Usually it’s fun and worthwhile!
Sounds like fun ;).
Well, GoS is rather SLOW. This is DAMN FAST.
HARDCORE Coders ONLY!
GSOC* xD
@Colin: not enough sleep? :-p
What do we need exploitation of labour for if we exploit ourselfes for reasons of rivalry? “Do nothing bad”… let the others do it to themselves!
Thank you mpan3 you brought it perfectly to the point. Just another one of those great OS Contest. I wonder if Google is really interested in promoting OS?
Hey this sounds like a bloody good idea!
I work in a programming dept and they say, you got 24 hours to make XYZ.
You’d be amazed what you can code when under pressure.
Bugs are going to happen, but the amount of work done is mind blowing!! And the bugs can be ironed out later.
I might check this out! Hmmmmm!
Terrible idea for Blender, unless it is a plugin or python program you going to code. But don’t mess up the source code. This sounds like the demo scene days of the Amiga and the Atari ST where demo groups has 24 hours to make a demo. You’ll get nice results but the code is hackish as hell.
24 hour programming – How macho! So, much for quality.
24 hour programing – How macho! So, much for quality.
This might benefit Blender if… The group of coders takes on something that’s a neat feature but no-one has done before for Blender.
Then, in a 24 hour coding spree they get the thing working to a draft-level.
After it’s done, the pressure from users would push it to be a finished feature.
If I might suggest, it would be cool to have a similar texturing functionality in Blender than 3D-coat (http://www.3dcoat.com) has.
Do that in 24 hours. =)
So this is kinda like the Physics Sprint/etc?
i heard of these kind of things like art sprints and stuff i always wanted to be able to just write/draw/dcc on the fly like that bt…yeah i if i dont have anythign clearly to do iam lost lol good luck to all those in the run i mean sprint i mean..uh you know lol
I am going to have my own sleeping sprint.
I think it could work, but only for a small-scale project/implementation. Take a smaller idea and work hard to flesh it out. Of course you could always have two coders working in shifts, while the 3rd gets some beauty sleep. Bring some ear plugs when the other coders get too annoying.
I’m one of those coders that does his best work burning the midnight oil. I know not everyone is like that and it is a horrible label coders have had to live up to in the workplace, but in the right environment it can be a lot of fun. It definitely has to be something the coders want to do and plan to have fun with, not something they are forced to do. Working all night to turn in my code for assembler class in college was not fun… Working all night to fine tune and perfect my code for a fractal terrain generator was. I mean in a nerdy sort of way. :-P
I bet the emacs guy is pissed
So, is this going to be coded with Emacs or Vi?
Every google product/service and FOSS project should have a brainstorm.
Feedback is important.
I really would like 6-digit filenames for frame sequence numbers, pre-filled with leading zeros so that frames are sorted and brought in correct order. It’s on the to-do list, been on there, but would allow seamless 105-minute movie editing inside Blender.