Daniel Draper first cut code at age 10 but has since moved on, attracted by diverse elements of business. But he recognises the technical exhilaration coders derive from writing an elegant program. Hence, his efforts to bring pure programmers out to the forefront.
Last year, his company Codehire, an agency that brings together freelance coders and employers, ran a coding competition in Adelaide. This year, it’s going national and international with it – starting 8 June and culminating in a 13 July final at Fishburners. Entries close on 7 June. To apply, click here.
“Coders’ talents are rarely recognised by the wider community and I wanted to change this,” Draper said.
Seeking to find individual brilliance, rather than teams, Draper has stayed away from the more conventional hackathons. The Codehire Cup, instead, assesses individuals on their solutions to workplace-based challenges.
Draper says entrants will join an “elite group” by simply participating in the event because Codehire has come to be “regarded as a yardstick for evaluating Australia’s depth of technical talent.”
To create a level playing field for competitors, the Codehire Cup will group contestants based on the language – for example, C, C++, C#, Ruby, Python, Java, JavaScript and PHP – they use to create their solutions.
“Coding languages aren’t created equal and some solutions will take longer to write in certain languages,” Draper said. “Ranking coders by language means all contestants have a better chance of taking home a share of $10,000 in cash and prizes.”
The competition starts with preliminary and semifinal rounds being held online from 8 June. Some of the contestants will be invited to participate in the live final on July 13 in Sydney at Fishburners, Australia’s largest tech focused co-working space. Even though the final is billed as live, Codehire says it will allow some to compete remotely.
