
Reasons to compete in this year’s Battlecode programming competition at MIT - sskates
http://spenserskates.com/whybattlecode
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Cixelyn
> "If you love programming, games, and competition, it’s the most fun you’ll
> ever have" As both a past competitor and someone who's been following the
> current game, I can't stress this enough, especially if you're the kind of
> person who likes to think for a long time to come up with novel approaches
> to problems.

As a contestant -- it's quite satisfying to be a step ahead of the crowd and
watch other teams copy your strategy.

As a spectator -- watching the metagame evolve is exciting.

Because the game is brand new every year, there's a fast-paced metagame that
the clever contestants get to define. It really brings me back the early days
of starcraft, when the unit synergies were not well defined and players were
theorycrafting new build orders all the time!

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tsumnia
I'd encourage students to compete, even if your best bots just run away from
their enemies. My buddy and I actually used Battlecode as our final project in
our AI course. We worked as a team and then had a mini competition between
ourselves using different techniques (his was focus on resources, mine seek
and destroy).

Even if you feel underwhelmed going against MIT students taking it as a class,
smaller schools still get recognition for participation. There is no correct
solution; I think '08's winner just mass spawned tanks instead of running any
type of strategy (he did test different set-ups and that was ultimately the
best).

Finally, like the post suggests, its a great thing get experience with and if
you are recognized in anyway (even Honorable Mention) is something nice to
slap on the ol' resume.

~~~
sskates
Oh that's awesome. What was your team name/year? I may have saw you on the
scrim servers.

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_dps
Feynman once said, speaking of the merits of seeking inspiration from
experiments rather than isolated theory, "The imagination of nature is greater
than the imagination of man."

Riffing on this idea, the imagination of a human opponent (even when expressed
as an algorithm) is far greater than the possible counterstrategies you will
imagine yourself when inventing your own system. Having a motivated,
intelligent, competitor actively probing your designs for weaknesses rapidly
teaches one about the extent to which your expectations for what a given
design will do match up to reality in the wild.

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stevearc
Competing in Battlecode was one of the best things I've ever done. Yes, it's
great experience. Yes, you'll become a better programmer. Yes, it's a lot of
fun.

But you learn things about _yourself_. Battlecode was my first love. It was
the first code I wrote that I really poured myself into. The hunger for
victory, the desire for perfection, the frantic last-minute hacks and
patches...a lot of emotion goes into this competition, and I was not expecting
that. I was an unmotivated, procrastinating slacker in high school. After
doing Battlecode I saw what I had in me. I saw that I really could work, and
work hard. I could work hard and love it! That has been life-changing for me.

I cannot recommend this competition enough. Participate, put everything you
have into it, and Battlecode will give back.

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mercora
I would love to attend to such an event but i am neither a MIT student nor
living in the US (i am living in Germany). I wonder if there are more
competitions like this but open for all. If no formal competition, i would
really like to see games like these. :)

~~~
sskates
You can do it- the competition and prizes are 100% open and they have people
from lots of schools at the finals.

~~~
mercora
Oh, ok. I guess i misinterpreted it as being closed. Anyways, i am also not a
student at any school. In fact, i have no formal graduation whatsoever. So my
question remains, are there more competition or games like those they have at
MIT?

~~~
sskates
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anything quite like it. Top coder is
a programming competition- although it's normally algorithms based instead of
objective based. If you do find anything, let me know! You can also still
compete if you're not a student, although I don't think you can win prizes.

~~~
mercora
Thanks a lot for your support. I will look into that :)

~~~
AnAlien
We could maybe use another teammate if you think you can be committed and be
dedicated in working at least 6+ hrs/day (you need time to catch up as well).

~~~
mercora
Can i somehow contact you, in a private manner ?

EDIT: You could encrypt your mail address for this PGP key:
[https://gist.github.com/mercora/52b6975f41c6ea93daf5](https://gist.github.com/mercora/52b6975f41c6ea93daf5)

~~~
AnAlien
just add me on skype: fahad.ahmed225

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diziet
Funny enough one of the sponsors of Battlecode is
[https://amplitude.com](https://amplitude.com) , the founders of which won in
2009 and 2010.

~~~
cocoflunchy
I'm pretty sure the OP is the CEO of Amplitude ;)

Edit: [https://amplitude.com/about](https://amplitude.com/about)

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vaidhy
Is the actual battlecode execution engine available for someone to try? It
seems like a nice project to set up a open battlecode server..

~~~
Cixelyn
Yup, everything's open source, setting up your own private competition is
quite doable.

[https://github.com/battlecode](https://github.com/battlecode)

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touristtam
Post for last year competition:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5022167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5022167)

Just in case, like me, you fail to notice it last year. ;)

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chx
I... don't get it. Why don't respectable hackers boycott MIT because of
Aaron's death? They never apologized AFAIK.

~~~
aaronem
Yes. Let us blame everyone except the man who chose to take his own life.

