Comment by kendalk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kendalk | Hacker News Reader

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I have been wanting to set up a similar program at another university. With 300+ students you have something good going. Your idea of organizing trips to hackathons is marvelous.

What language are you hoping to get them started on? Python? Scheme? I have been wanting to start with Scheme... but that is because I read PG's essay and got bitten by the bug.

Keeping the lecture time down to 45 minutes sounds wise. Students are already swamped with class hours so keeping the weekend time burden down is probably the right move.

Perhaps you could set up teams that could compete with each other through a series of programming challenges? You could find a local business who would sponsor a prize, or a restaurant that would offer a dinner for the winning team.

Be sure to post updates on your group's website. Other people, like myself, are wanting to do the same thing at other schools and would be encouraged to hear about your progress. Your website could also link to the students' work on Github once they are ready to step into their first real projects.

Your program sounds exciting! Keep us up to date.

> Perhaps you could set up teams that could compete with each other through a series of programming challenges? You could find a local business who would sponsor a prize, or a restaurant that would offer a dinner for the winning team.

I like this idea. Through my experience in several student orgs, it seems that the best way to get people to stay involved is competition and prizes. Personally, I would much rather see students be self driven, but there's a hump of "oh I'm too busy to do this" (or something of the sort) that most students need to get over before taking a huge interest in it.

Good point.

I replied to kendalk and mentioned that forming teams and having competitions might be overwhelming in the beginning, but maybe it makes sense to two individual semester semester-long prizes for a CS major and non-CS major that build the coolest product.

In addition to having a prize for a CS major and a non-CS major, you could have one that is specifically for a new beginner to programming. Some students have been hacking since they were in junior high but have a different major. I started with a Commodore VIC-20 and BASIC but I wasn't a CS major in college.

Thanks Kendal!

I think we'll probably have them start on Ruby since we have a few students that can teach it and have experience in RoR.

> Perhaps you could set up teams that could compete with each other through a series of programming challenges?

I like the idea but I think students might find this to be too much in the beginning. Especially when CS majors are competing with non-CS majors.

Maybe a better option is to promote the Binghamton hackathon from early on and offer prizes/competition for the groups that entered without experience.

> You could find a local business who would sponsor a prize, or a restaurant that would offer a dinner for the winning team.

I definitely want to keep it as local as possible and even have a few community members signed up.

> Be sure to post updates on your group's website.

I'd recommend following the progress on Twitter and GitHub:

- https://twitter.com/HackBinghamton

- https://github.com/HackBinghamton

Thanks for all the advice and feel free to reach out by email (it's on my profile).

> I definitely want to keep it as local as possible and even have a few community members signed up.

You might gain some local sponsors by offering to put their company logo on your website. See the bottom of the page of http://clojure-conj.org for the Clojure Conj conference. There are "Platinum," "Gold," and "Supporting" sponsors listed.

Put a Sponsors page on your website and make it easy for businesses to sign up. You could even have a donate button.

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