The Mines team “Over Developed” placed second to Georgia Institute of Technology in the WindWard Code Wars competition Feb. 1. Teams from top universities competed in the eight-hour contest by analyzing a problem, creating a solution and testing it against entries of other programming experts.
Computer science students Daniel Mawhirter, Han Tran and Espen Roth were given a brief description of the competition from the previous year, but there was little discussion of strategy between each other.
“The challenge isn't given until the time of the competition so it's hard to prepare for it, but they do allow different programming languages so prior knowledge about those can help,” Roth said.
Knowing C#, Java or C++ is beneficial, as team members are required to write in at least one of them.
For this year’s competition, teams needed to program taxi drivers to travel around a map and pick up and drop off CEOs from large companies in fictional cities. Points were awarded for every pick up and drop off. The map constantly changed, so team members had to be quick at writing code to handle different challenges.
Tran said his team went through a mixture of feelings during the competition.
“We were confused at first, not knowing where to start, and then frustrated trying to make things work the way we wanted,” Tran said. “But at the end of the day, it was priceless seeing all the teams play together. It was an amazing experience.”
Contact:
Kathleen Morton, Communications Coordinator / 303-273-3088 / KMorton@mines.edu
Karen Gilbert, Director of Public Relations / 303-273-3541 / KGilbert@mines.edu
