
MIT Web Programming Competition Finalists - jlaurend
http://6.470.scripts.mit.edu/webbys/
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jlaurend
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.)

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prezjordan
How many of these projects have turned into real companies?

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ernestipark
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.

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ernestipark
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.

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ekianjo
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.

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jtanderson
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.

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jlaurend
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>).

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

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

