Last spring, thirty-six computer science students spent 21 hours competing in a hackathon, a programming contest sponsored by the ACM student organization. Students competed individually or in teams of up to three people. At 6 p.m. on April 18, they were given an assignment: design a program that would enhance life on campus. They had until 3 p.m. the following day, and many of the teams stayed up all night working on their programs.
The competition was judged by Susan Gauch, head of the department of computer science and computer engineering and holder of the Rodger S. Kline Endowed Chair in Computer Science and Computer Engineering; professor John Gauch; assistant professor Matthew Patitiz; and Paul Martin, a U of A alumnus and a programmer for SOAPware, a local software company.
“I am so pleased that the ACM group organized our first ever Hackathon,” said Susan Gauch. “The final projects were amazingly creative and the students demonstrated just how many different languages, packages, and technologies they could bring together to create a solution in under 24 hours. They made the job of the judges very difficult. The most surprising thing was that, as a break from all their programming assignments, students came and programmed for fun.”
The winning team, called HAK, was made up of doctoral students Stephen Ashmore, Zachariah Kindle and Jon Hammer. Their prize was a Raspberry Pi, a computer about the size of a deck of cards that is easy to program. The HAK team created an Android application called “My UARK,” which collects useful information about the university and makes it easily accessible from a smart phone.
“The most surprising thing was that, as a break from all their programming assignments, students came and programmed for fun.”
– Susan Gauch, department head