Our team is mainly composed of novice hackers, and we noticed that most hackathons aren’t inclusive; first time hackers often feel left out because they want to compete but do not have the skills to do so. If they do compete, they don’t fully have time to learn anything, they focus more on creating a working project than learning. Additionally, we noticed that the mentors are usually dormant - their time isn’t utilized well with separations between the competitors and the learners.
HackDex is a platform that, in cooperation with ongoing hackathons, spotlights a topic for hackers of all experience to start and complete a project by the end of the program. It involves combining the learning and competitive parts of a hackathon together into one; first time hackers are given the opportunity to be introduced to a topic while still being able to compete in a fair content which accommodates their skill level.
Some of our team had some previous experience with React, so we used React to build the front end of our web app. We wanted to challenge ourselves, so we learned and used Discord OAuth, ExpressJS and the Google Cloud Platform to build our first prototype.
Finding an idea we all agreed upon that was also unique and productive Integrating discord login Routing pages on React HTTPS vs HTTP (why is SSL so hard to set up :[ ) Hosting on Firebase. Why is it so difficult and complicated? Firebase’s ridiculously slow deploy times Sleep deprivation Distractions due to utter disappointment after losing all the mini contests (dang tomato fruits :L) React website styling Environment variables with NodeJS are painful
Successfully integrating the discord login Opening firewall ports on GCP VMs Setting up Google Firebase to automatically update our website Connecting a domain with Firebase Building out an actual project with something interesting
We learned about GCP VMs How to create and live update a domain How to properly use React and SCSS The large and vast difference between HTTPS and HTTP in regards to having proper running discord login connection. Basic OBS Recording
In the future, we can refine the UI, add a full IDE to view previous versions of your projects, a showcase to see what other participants have created, and external resources to pursue after the workshops are over.