Hackathon is a competition among developers to create digital solutions in the interests of the customer. Although these types of events are very popular in the IT environment, many talented professionals are afraid to participate in them. One of the reasons is the stereotype about the guaranteed loss of rights to the developed solution. Evgeny Mavrin, one of the winners of the large-scale hackathon, dispels this myth, and also talks about the advantages and prospects of programmer competitions.
Eugene is a young promising developer. Taking part in the Megapopis Moscow track, organized by the Moscow Innovation Agency as part of the VirusHack online hackathon, he, as part of the EGD BAG team (together with Alexei Airapetov and Anna Kovalenko), performed better than others the task of creating an information bot for the ICQ New messenger, which reported users about the spread of coronavirus infection.
β Eugene, what did you and your team members do before participating in the hackathon? Where did you study, where did you work, what projects did you lead? Have you been in business?
We are a team of peers. Graduated from the MSTU named after N. E. Bauman under the program "Information Systems and Technologies" in 2019. We all do programming, but in different directions. For example, my main stack is C++/Qt, and Lesha's (Alexey Airapetov - author's note) has Java. In addition to the main work, each of us had our own pet-projects in different stages of completion (read abandoned). In general, little has come to the release. None of our team has ever been in business before. But we participated, let's say, in βfriendly freelancingβ, when IT help is simply required for someone we know.
Thanks to education and common interests in the field of IT, it is not difficult for us to offer and implement a working solution to almost any problem.
β Was it the first time you took part in a hackathon? How did you hear about the Megapolis Moscow track?
β Personally, I have already participated in the Aramco Upstream Solutions Technathon 2019 hackathon in a team with comrades from the Russian State University of Oil and Gas named after I.M. Gubkin, but that time we were not lucky. The team did not have a match among the participants.
We learned about the track "Megapolis Moscow" from friends: they just threw an advertisement from some community of Sharpists (C # - developers) into the chat. VirusHack approached participation in the hackathon responsibly: they decided on the task in advance and roughly distributed the responsibilities. And it really helped.
β How do you assess the complexity of the ICQ New customer's task? What is the level of the opponents?
β The task perfectly, in my opinion, fits into the time frame of the hackathon. Often, in a couple of days that are allotted for a hackathon, many teams present a concept or prototype as a final decision. We presented the finished product, which later, together with the customer, quickly brought it into production. The level of competitors was high. And I was really excited to see the results of other teams. Many participants allowed themselves a free interpretation of the task: someone, for example, made a bot with which you could play simple casual games.
- Tell us about the decision that turned out in the end? What tools were used to develop it?
βThe result was an information bot that informed users about the spread of the coronavirus infection.
By geotagging, people could receive information about new and old cases of infection of citizens, find out the addresses of the nearest medical institutions and laboratories for testing for COVID-19, and the addresses of the nearest pharmacies and stores. Also, a simplified SMS generator was built into the bot to receive an electronic pass.
When writing a bot, standard Java language tools were used to regulate computational threads. To greatly simplify the work of the bot, an API library from ICQ was chosen. We also solved the problem of simplifying the deployment of the bot in a production environment: knowing that Docker is now the standard in corporate development, we prepared a Docker image.
In general, the product turned out to be easy to upgrade and adapted to scaling.
β What was the most difficult thing?
β The most difficult thing, probably, was to βcombineβ all the functionality of the bot so that it would be convenient to use. We implemented the interface in such a way that the user enters data in text only in extreme cases, such as, for example, to indicate the reason for issuing a one-time pass (yes, it was relevant until recently). All interaction with the bot was reduced to the competent use of the tools of the messenger itself. We have completely disabled the ability to manually enter commands. By the way, here is a demo video of the bot:
β You became the winner of the hackathon. How did events develop further?
- We learned one very useful thing - as it turned out, we ourselves remained the copyright holders of the bot, which even surprised me a little. I thought that any hackathon is, roughly speaking, an exchange of an idea born in a team brainstorm for a valuable prize. But I re-read the agreement and the rules of participation and did not find anything like that. So to other hackathon participants who are worried about having to transfer the rights to their developments, I want to say that no, itβs far from a fact that you will be obliged to do this. At the VirusHack hackathon, it was even possible to store the code in private repositories, and simply give one of the jury members temporary access to make a decision. In any case, always read the participation documents before the hackathon so that there are no surprises in the future.
By the way, we decided to leave our code open: . "Fork" on health.
After the hackathon, on our own initiative, we prepared a bot port for the Telegram API in case of a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. But it is better to let this project forever remain in private repositories.
Now we are thinking about how to adapt the functionality of the bot to the current situation, when the self-isolation regime has been lifted. For example, to search for fitness centers, restaurants and other city facilities. Members of the ICQ New team are not against hosting an updated version of the bot at their facilities.
β Should programmers participate in hackathons? What do you think they can give participants and winners?
- Definitely worth it. Itβs a cool experience to complete an applied task from scratch in a couple of days, which you can then discuss with experts. Plus, this is an opportunity to evaluate your skills and the "skills" of team members on a real two-three-day marathon. It's also networking. In any field, especially in IT, this is a very important aspect of development, I think. You can find new people who are useful to you, chat with them, see their projects. In addition, doing only development at your main place of work, you can try yourself at a hackathon in a new role, for example, a βproduct ownerβ, βteam leadβ or another role. But for the winner, this is an opportunity for successful cooperation with top companies, assistance in promoting their idea. There are many cases where large-scale projects grew out of hackathons.
β In August, the acceptance of applications for a new hackathon to solve the problems of the city starts . Its winners will receive a solid reward. Will your team participate in it? How will you prepare? If you win, what will you spend the prize money on?
β For me, as well as for the rest of the team, the main goal of participating in the hackathon is the opportunity to develop a product prototype within the area of ββinterest to us.
We gain experience in team development and a good project in the portfolio, we face interesting and complex tasks. Of course we want to win. However, we are not aimed at receiving a cash prize. If the project is beneficial, this will be our victory.
To prepare for the competition we will try to expand the team: in the previous hackathon there were three of us and, frankly, there were simply not enough hands. In addition, we will resolve the issue with the installed software so that all team members have the required set of programs before the start of the competition (as experience has shown, a huge amount of time is spent on resolving problems with software synchronization).
If we still manage to get a prize, then we will spend the money on PS5 and sit down at home for a couple of weeks. Joke! Of course, we understand that the cash prize is, first of all, financial assistance for the further development of the project. Hosting, virtual machines and so on are part of what the funds will be allocated to.
Source: habr.com