Iron Coder Live

C4[1]’s big addition — and the primary reason we’re officially spilling into Sunday — is Iron Coder Live.

Iron Coder is a software competition shamelessly ripped off from MacHack’s Hack Show. Which is impressive, because I’m rather sure Iron Coder’s principals never attended MacHack.

I’m glad their vibe is so similar, since I loved that bloody Hack Show. You can read Adam Engst’s “Will Hack for Food!” TidBITS article series for a reminder of what it was like.

To me, the Hack Show was all about programmer machismo. Machismo in the English sense of the word: essentially a showing off of your programming prowess. Pride, vanity and probably some other deadly sins.

It’s all about creating something cool, perhaps something Normals wouldn’t think is neat, but sends shivers down fellow programmers’ spines. You can even just fake your hack: if it’s convincing enough, that’s cool just by itself.

I’ve seen more mind-blowing software at MacHack than I’ve seen anywhere else, which is all the more impressive since most of it was coded inside 72 hours. MacHack was a pressure cooker that created some real gems like Unstoppable Progress.

Nomenclature

MacHack called entries “hacks”. Iron Coder dubs entries “submissions”.

Submissions makes a lot of sense: most Iron Coder entries are stand-alone apps and don’t modify the system. Plus that label fosters contest legitimacy.

But calling entries hacks is a lot more fun. Plus I’m used to calling entries hacks due to the years of MacHack. So I’m going with that. Don’t worry, Iron Coder’s standard vernacular resumes after C4[1].

Hack Time

Usually Iron Coder runs 48 hours after the API+theme is announced. In theory I could announce the API+theme Friday night and then hold the contest on Sunday since I have you for the whole weekend. That would be very MacHack-ish.

However a hallmark of C4 is its great socialization, and I fear folks would bang away on their machines versus actually talking to each other. MacHack got away with it due to its multitrack nature and 72 hour lifespan. I don’t think C4[1] really has the time budget.

So I encourage you to work on your hack before arriving at C4[1]. I’ve already emailed the API+theme to the attendees:

API: iPhone
Theme: conspiracy

Now officially there’s no such thing as an iPhone API. So I guess it’s up to you to decide what that means. Be creative.

Code Injection

One of the rules of standard Iron Coder is that programs must run in their own address space (and also can’t require authentication). Again, this is sensible due to the structure of Iron Coder’s judging process, where the judge runs all the submissions locally on his own machine.

But for Iron Coder Live, the author demonstrates his hack on his own machine (ideally — if you don’t have a notebook we’ll have an extra Mac for you to load your software on). Thus I don’t care if you use code injection or not. So injection technologies like APE, SIMBL and mach_* are all fair game.

The gloves are off, but please use your power wisely. Or not: that actually might be more fun.

Prizes

Thanks to VMware, there will be prizes.

The audience votes on the winning hacks. And for the Best Hack, I have something special that I hope grows to be an icon for Mac coding mastery: the Golden Dogtag.

Sunday, August 05, 2007
01:12 PM