Rumbling for EfiCode?

One of the most important things Ruby did for me was that it helped me break out of the Java ghetto. Previously, Java was the only language I really knew well, and because of that I naturally thought it was the answer to every problem in the world. I’ve since learned how severely this limited my creativity and ability to solve programming problems. Perhaps even more importantly, it actually made programming enjoyable again.

However, I still use Java professionally all the time, and don’t actually think it’s that bad. My point is that learning to program in other languages well has greatly improved my ability to think. This has made me so much better at Java as well, than I would be had I not made the leap.

So, as learning many different languages and frameworks is obviously a good idea, I’ve been thinking of possibilities to enable people to experiment with them. One idea that this severely hung over brain of mine produced today was to organize an internal “coding competition” at EfiCode. Rails Rumble was a good experience for me, and led to the thought that maybe we could do something similar.

The Gist of It

People are divided into 4-5 teams. Each team will create and deploy a web application, and they will do it in two days. The application domain can be anything, and there are no restrictions for the functionality (apart from that it must be browser-based). The only rule – and this is the interesting part – is that the application must be done in a language and framework the team has never used before. Here’s some possibilities:

• Ruby and Rails
• Smalltalk and Seaside
• Python and Django
• Erlang and Erlyweb
• Scala and Lift
• Groovy and Grails

All members of a team will be physically located in the same space. Meeting rooms would probably be ideal for this. All workspaces are equipped with network connections, a projector, whiteboards, index cards and other writing materials, and some refreshments.

Each team will get their own Subversion repository, and a fresh Linux server / VPS for deployment. All other software usage is voluntary, but access to Mingle, Trac, Campfire and a wiki will be provided.

At the end of the second day, all teams gather in the same place, and over a few beers, will in turn present their application. They’ll also be asked to discuss the peculiarities of the technology they chose, what was good about it and what wasn’t that good.

After the presentation, we’ll have a vote on whose application was best. The winners will receive some kind of prize, such as some cool gadgets.

The comp would ideally be scheduled to start on a Thursday morning and finish the following Friday evening. We could possibly do this at the time of this year’s x-mas party, so after the competition we could continue with the festivities.

I think this would be an extremely fun exercise in programming and teamwork. And who knows, maybe the beginnings of a great product or two would also come out of it.