My life has been so hectic recently I thought I'd take some time out to go to a coding event and thought it was excellent. That's right, I went to the Crappy Code Games event held at Rev Bar on Oxford Rd on 18th March 2011. I know, it was the same day as St Paddy's Day and that is always a day to drink yourselves silly because it is 'accepted' but as I am not Irish, I am happy to leave it those who are :)
The DBA coding event, which was run by Fusion-io and SQL Bits, was the first annual event for them. This one was at Manchester but they are holding them over in Brighton and London too. It's what you would expect at this type of event - you know the kind, loads of geeks and nerds all herding around computers comparing some amazing code they wrote in their sleep and claim to have the world's best solution to everything digital... Yep, not normally something I would be interested in as I really don't want to show everyone up with my amazingness (or at least get laughed at for mentioning that I have never worked with .Net 3.5), but I decided to go because my boyfriend and his workmates were going. I like to show support every once in a while!
The event was holding competitions which could win you prizes such as a Sony Vaio or Xbox 360. I knew I would have absolutely no chance of winning so I never really thought about attempting to compete. Yet we decided to take a look at the competitions available for the night and all came to the same conclusion that we were in way over our heads about even thinking of it! However, being sat there for over an hour and noticing no one else was turning up (except one other DBA), it turned out that we were going to be the only ones there and thus someone would need to compete. At least there was a level playing field with regards to skill sets so it didn't seem to bad.
Normally the rules are that you prepare for this sort of competition in your own time before you get to the event - however, the guys there were nice enough to show off their Fusio-io packed computers and let us play for about an hour or so. This is when it started to become more of a competition between the guys we were with as to who had the best solutions to the first two competitions (High Jump and 100m Dash). As we were getting more and more into it, the guys asked if we wanted to make our attempts into the real competition. Why not? Nothing to lose at all!
Just to clarify at this point, one team had four people, another had two (to which I was a by-stander for this team) and the last team had one. That shows you how little turn out it was (which was disappointing as it was an amazing night!).
It was getting close to the end of the event and thus the tests had to be taken to show who had the best code. We were nervous as we thought the DBA would surely have the best code - however, it turned out to be our team!!! Andy and Ian (Andy's partner on the team) ended up winning first prize in the competition and were so proud. They walked away with a Sony Vaio, how cool is that?! Only problem was that they had to figure out who would get the laptop in the end as they both couldn't own it. Ian said he wanted a new laptop and Andy being Andy wanted it because it was cool. Fights fought and arguments made, it was decided that Andy would pay half of what it was worth to Ian and get the laptop to himself (or more likely between me and him!). Therefore we now have a new toy in the house (as well as new furniture).
What ended the night amazingly was that the Fusion-io guys had broken a record for the most read outs of the new cards they sell. Apparently the number is about 200,000 i/o but whilst we were there, they managed to get double that (which has never been seen before, even in their engineering department that test these out) and were testing and re-testing it to see if what they saw was correct. As we were leaving, we were informed that the guy who had done the tests was currently writing a letter/email informing their director - a bit of 'look what we did!' and trying not to be smug about it.
The night was a fab night and I would definitely do it again :) The guys who were there running the event were amazing. I did take some pictures of the event but they don't really do it justice so I'm going to wait until they are on Facebook and will give a link to them.
If you want to check out Crappy Code Games, Fusion-io or SQL Bits, go to:
The pics are up people!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=154453044614980&id=14169737589054...
You may need to 'like' Crappy Code Games to see them...
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