Penn Hackathon: 'Terrifying in best ways'
300 student programmers from MIT to Berkeley descend on Penn next weekend to build new stuff quick
Penn Hackathon: 'Terrifying in best ways'
Joseph N. DiStefano
Pennapps, the twice-yearly computer-programming hackathon at the University of Pennsylvania, filled its enlarged quota of speed-coding students from across the U.S. for its Sept. 14-16 weekend program in 35 minutes, co-organizer Trisha Kothari tells me in a note she send from Zurich.
All 100 "Penn hacker" and 200 "Visiting hacker" tickets were snapped right up within 25 minutes after sign-ups started just before midnight two days ago. "We're in fact completely sold out right now, and have huge waiting lists," Kothari says. The out-of-towners includes students "from Berkeley in the West Coast to MIT on the East."
"This is terrifying in the best of all possible ways," said co-organizer Amalia Hawkins.
Lucky applicants will enjoy what Hackathon and its corporate sponsors promise will be "tons of free food and swag and frisbee [and] midnight Nerfgun fights," not to mention the main event, which starts with 6 pm Friday's API (applciation programming interface) demo (e.g. the IT platform and coding specs version of 'Here's your car, there's the brakes, that's your turning radius, now go drive').
How many of these hackers will stay all 40 hours? "Only a few teams usually do that," said Hawkins. Others will crash with host students for brief naps before they're back coding again. The public is invited to the awards ceremony Sunday 5 p.m. Houston Hall, on Spruce St. west of 34th.
