MIT Web Programming Competition Finalists | Hacker News Reader

MIT Web Programming Competition Finalists

6.470.scripts.mit.edu

33 pointsjlaurend10 comments

MIT 6.470 is a web programming competition/class that started 6 years ago. Our mission is to push the bar on web programming here at MIT and to get more people involved earlier on in their careers. We also strongly believe that competition is a fun and energizing way to learn.

I also want to mention that we're always considering ways to expand our reach. We would love to positively impact the greater community by either expanding our current competition, running additional competitions, or expanding our educational materials/software. We have plenty of ideas of our own (and not enough time ;) but I'm certainly up for discussing ideas, receiving advice, etc anytime! (Feel free to email me or just post here.)

How many of these projects have turned into real companies?

Very few if any. The focus isn't really building companies or startups, but more-so to fit the theme, learn some new stuff, and build something cool in a month. A lot of people come in with a ton of web-programming experience and do it for the competition and prize money, but there are also plenty of noobies learning how to make websites for the first time.

As a faraway observer with no need to review all the sites, short summaries of the entries would be much appreciated.

I had the privilege of being a judge this year. An extremely interesting takeaway from this competition is the changing climate of web technologies/design every year. I was a participant in the competition two years ago and the level of complexity and refinement of the websites was not really close to this year's overall. Two years ago, the focus was very much on building and clean HTML5 sites without much other emphasis. Now, Bootstrap has helped the generally design-lacking MIT students put some shine on their websites, and tools like node.js and Backbone are making more rich, real-time applications much easier to build.

From seeing the difference in two years, it's clear how important open source technologies are for helping people push the boundaries of what the web is capable of with less effort than ever. Of course, many of these things existed just two years ago as well, but improved projects and exposure is helping move things forward.

Wow, you can really see these are student projects. They are basically focused on what students care about. It makes sense, but it's very narrow-minded and probably not very appealing to many people out there. THis being said, some of the services are very well designed.

It's really interesting to see that most of them are map or trip related. I guess it makes sense due to all the data provided by mobile location-based services.

There were three themes they could choose from: vacations, real-time eduction, and meeting new people (more detail here: http://6.470.scripts.mit.edu/2013/competition/challenge).

Notability was the best; though, I haven't had a chance to collaborate on notes with anybody.

Notability is awesome! I'd definitely use it - much better than peeking at a neighbors notes.

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