Before the hackathon, we began brainstorming ideas for our project. This hackathon had no theme so we could create anything we wanted. We landed on creating a website that would help students communicate with other students in the same class as them. They could logon to the website and begin instantly chatting with other people. This was the idea, we didn’t realize how hard it was going to be.
At the beginning of the hackathon we made one big mistake when programming the chat server and client needed for the website. We programmed it in Java. By programming it in Java we ran into a whole bunch of problems while trying to implement it into the website. No matter what we tried we couldn’t make it work, so we decided we would have the students download the .jar file and run it on their computer. However we didn’t realize people without Java installed on their computer wouldn’t be able to run it, but there was nothing we could do about that as time was running short.
We were able to finish the website and the server/client Java programs on time but it didn’t turn out the way we were expecting. We did our best and had a lot of fun, which was why we came to the hackathon. Throughout the hackathon we became much better programmers and in the process we won the "most professional” program.
The hackathon was a great experience, one that I hope to repeat soon.
View in Github: Click Me
View Live Website: Click Me
Chicago Tribune Article: Click Me
