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Now I feel old! I participated in the first two Battlecode's ever, but that was back when it was simply 6.370. The first year was a board game and we stared a
by leelin 14y ago
Now I feel old! I participated in the first two Battlecode's ever, but that was back when it was simply 6.370. The first year was a board game and we stared at ASCII graphics all IAP long. By my M.Eng year, Aaron Iba and co. turned everything around and kicked off the golden age of 6.370.
Amazingly, they still have the final prizes posted from 2002 and most years in between. Our team won the hilarious gag prize: "greatest design mismatch between document and code." First place that year was $500. Last year when I went, some of the gag prizes were $1000, including prizes like "last team to submit a jar before the submission deadline"
http://web.mit.edu/ieee/6.370/2002/web/bracket.shtml http://web.mit.edu/ieee/6.370/2002/web/bracket.shtml
- sskates 14y agoI am curious- what was the atmosphere at the finals like when you were a contestant? I remember when I first went in 2008, it felt like the superbowl for nerds. Competitors would get up on stage and provide commentary while their swarms of virtual robots would duke it out on screen. There would be a bunch of oohs and aahs from the audience as each team of robots tried to gain the upper hand. The entire auditorium would erupt in cheers at the end of the match for the winner. I remember thinking Albert Ni was a coding god after seeing his team walk off stage as champions of the tournament.
- leelin 14y agoI believe 2004 was the turning point when the audience was very engaged -- that was the first year spectating was lots of fun, 34-101 was packed, cheering all around, etc. In 2001 and 2002, spectating was not fun at all, partly due to technical issues mid-contest. To make things more entertaining, Prof. Daniel Jackson asked Guy Steele to get up and talk about the new features in Java 1.4, and discuss when generics in java.util would be fully supported. Not joking....