CODE WAR

Eight Teams – One Chance at Glory!

Code War pits the development skills of teams from all over Australia head–to–head in a series of sudden death coding challenges taking anywhere from two to twenty minutes.

Each team needs a name, three to five members and a laptop capable of mounting a USB drive and producing 1024x768 VGA output. Here is an example of a typical challenge:

The complete text of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is on this USB key. Be the first to print out the 7th and 25th sentences that contain both "Elizabeth" and "Darcy".

During a challenge, the teams must develop a computer program* in the programming language of their choice and run the program, displaying the result on the screen which will be connected to a projector visible to the audience. In the first and third rounds the first team to display the correct result as deemed by the judges is the winner of the challenge.

The second round is a fixed length build–and–pitch competition, in which a brief is given before a short break. After the break each team has twenty minutes to create their solution. The team with the most imaginative and–or amusing solution wins by audience applause. Most teams contain some designers and creative tools in case they make it to round two. Note that some programming* must still take place. Past rounds have included love–meters, relaxation tools for Steve Jobs and people simulators...

The team that is victorious over three rounds of competition is the overall winner, and is usually showered with whatever mildly impressive prizes we can scrape together. Recognition is also given to "smug" winners: audience members who manage to work out the answer before the teams on the stage.

It's amazing how difficult development becomes with an open bar, eighty people in the audience and a compare picking holes in your coding technique — in fact it's a great illustration of the advantages of a stress–free workplace!

Register a team or come and be part of the crowd — everyone is welcome :-).

* Requires writing lines of code in an IDE or text editor which is then compiled or interpreted to produce output. The code and program output have to be legible for audience members watching on a projector. No network connections are allowed during the competition.

Upcoming Events

Watch this space for more Code War events in 2011!

Past Events

Gone but not forgotten! Field a team and there's a chance of immortal glory in our table of past champions.

Thanks to our Code War Supporters Past and Present

RocketBoots would like to acknowledge all the people and organisations who help make CodeWar happen:

• Atlassian
• Phil Haeusler
• Richard Turner-Jones
• Dylan Jay
• Andy Stewart
• Anchor Hosting