Communications of the ACM
Crunchtime for Coders
After two sleepless nights and gallons of coffee, students walked away from HopHacks with new friends, complimentary swag, and a jumpstart on their next big venture.
Credit: Will Kirk / Johns Hopkins University
Nearly 300 students from across the U.S. gathered for a sleepless 36-hour weekend coding marathon in Johns Hopkins University's Hodson Hall earlier this month. Fueled by Red Bull and pizza, students from more than 20 universities "hacked" together all-new programs and applications to solve real-world problems.
Hosted each fall by the Johns Hopkins University Department of Computer Science, HopHacks is a 36-hour hackathon where students are invited to solve technology challenges, network with peers, compete for prizes, and participate in professional development workshops presented by sponsors.
Teams of up to four students had from 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 15, until 8:45 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 17, to hack together their projects. While they were allowed to use publicly available libraries and APIs, sponsored computing frameworks, and even AI apps like ChatGPT, every single line of code had to be written within the walls of Hodson Hall.
This year, student hackers vied for first, second, and third place prizes of $1,024, $512, and $256, respectively. Prizes were awarded based on submissions' overall usefulness, level of polish, creativity, and technical difficulty. Participants also could submit solutions to specific challenges posed by sponsors.
Out of 50 submissions, a local hacking duo — Zavier Howard, a senior majoring in computer science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Ryan Phillip, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland — earned this year's grand prize.
From Johns Hopkins University
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