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Congrats! I knew Aaron at Google, and he was one of the smartest engineers around. He also built one of the coolest pieces of software I've ever seen (Robocraf
by dlevine 15y ago
Congrats! I knew Aaron at Google, and he was one of the smartest engineers around.
He also built one of the coolest pieces of software I've ever seen (Robocraft). It was a Starcraft clone where users had to code up AIs for each of the units (and then those AIs battle each other). MIT uses it as the foundation for a programming competition that they run every January. I think it was done by him and one other person.
- trun 15y agoMost of that software has been rewritten several times over now, but the competition lives on (it's called Battlecode now)! We actually open sourced a bunch of the code base last year if you're interested in checking it out [1]. Additionally, the competition has since been opened to outsiders so you can participate even if you're not at MIT. We never publicized that fact very well, but I imagine it would appeal to much of the HN crowd. I also recommend checking it out if you've got some time to kill [2]. [1] https://github.com/battlecode/ https://github.com/battlecode/ [2] http://www.battlecode.org http://www.battlecode.org
- DanBC 15y ago(https://www.battlecode.org/info/ https://www.battlecode.org/info/) (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-370-robocraft-programming-competition-january-iap-2005/projects/ http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...) Looks amazing. I'd be interested to see what HNers could do with this.
- sskates 15y agoTrying to make a competitive AI for Battlecode is uncannily similar to trying to create a successful startup (and much, much less intimidating.) Aaron deserves a lot of credit for starting it (the other founder is David Greenspan, who also did Etherpad with Aaron.)