Yesterday, I had the great honor to attend HackATX, a hackathon for all girls held at Indeed, and organized by one of my fellow NCWIT Winners.

The Hackathon was from 8 in the morning to 9 in the night, and was day filled with frustration, pride, awe, and of course, learning. Many of you all told me that you guys really liked the format of the blog that I used when explaining the Diversity Hackathon, so I will use the same format while taking you all with me for this one. Without further delay, let us stalk myself in the event: Hack ATX!

7:30AM: I told myself the night before that I would wake up at 7:00, but clearly that did not happen. For some reason (totally not because I pressed snooze on my alarm) I got up really late (7:30) and rushed to brush my teeth, get ready, and eat breakfast. As a food enthusiast, this breakfast was the saddest breakfast in my life, as it consisted of me stuffing a meager orange into my mouth. So ya, in summary, Saturday morning consisted of me running around like a banshee trying to organize my life and redeem myself from the mistake of oversleeping that I had committed in the early morning hours.

8:15AM: We reached Indeed, and registered at their Cafeteria, where the event was being held. I stepped into the Indeed Cafeteria, and hands down, they have the best company cafeteria that I have ever seen! Go Indeed!!! There were already a group of high school girls like me sitting at one of the long, white tables. I sat across from a girl who was furiously typing on her laptop, looking like she was doing some professional coding. I quickly introduced myself to her, and learned that she was a Senior in high school and would be studying Computer Science in UT Austin! I had officially made my first friend in this Hackathon.

8:20 AM: Another very enthusiastic and happy girl sat down next to us! Her enthusiasm and excitement was infectious! Very soon, I made my second great friend in this Hackathon! I learned that she was a Freshman in high school who had no idea about Computer Science, but just wanted to try it out. All three of us quickly agreed to become a team in the Hackathon.

8:30 AM: A workshop on Python coding started. There, we learned about the basics of Python. I had never learned Python before. Though it was also an object-oriented language like Java, the syntax was very different. For instance, I thought Python was a little more concise and to the point. In fewer words, you were able to execute a command. This was very different from Java, which is a very verbose language. This observation is seen by the same ‘Hello World’ program executed in both codes.

Java: public class HelloWorld {    public static void main (String[] args)    {        System.out.println(“Hello World!”);    } }

Python:         print(‘Hello World’)

Honestly, after the workshop, I realized that I really liked Python. The workshop motivated me to start self-learning Python.

9:30AM: A workshop on HTML, CSS, and Javascript began. Although I had some exposure into HTML and CSS, I had never investigated Javascript before. From the name I had assumed that it was very similar to Java. I could not have been more wrong. Though they sound similar, Java and Javascript have key differences. From the insightful workshop, here are the notes I took while learning about that.

Java: Java can create code to run on a mobile application and on a browser. Java had to be compiled. This means that one has to transform the Java code written, into a format that the computer can understand, before executing it.

Javascript: Provides a level of interactivity for the user of the website that can’t be achieved with HTML. Javascript only creates code to run on the browser. Javascript is scripting language, which means that you don’t have to compile it. If you save the changes, and open up the html file on your web browser, the changes will be seen.

10:30 AM: We had a workshop on Java. There, I was able to confirm my assumptions about the differences between Java and Python and Java and Javascript.

11:30AM: The theme for this Hackathon was to create a mobile application or a Web app to solve one of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development goals. One of the Sustainable Development Goals that we all liked, was Good Health. With that, we officially formed our team and brainstormed our idea. By 12:00PM, we had our idea and screens planned out. Our idea was to create a calendar system in which doctors and patients can communicate with one another through calendar invites. When the patient checks ‘yes I did it’ to the invite, they get a certain number of points for completing the activity. The person with the most points in that clinic or practice will get healthcare benefits and rewards, from our partner companies.

12:00PM: We broke for lunch! The lunch was a make your own sandwich buffet, all sponsored by Indeed and was really good! I especially liked the adorable Geek looking cookies and the Chocolate brownies. As of now, Indeed really is my favorite company :).

12:30 PM: We decided to use Bootstrap to code our website. We decided to tackle projects based on our coding experience. The Senior, who had the most experience with coding decided to tackle the most challenging aspect of our web application, the calendar, by using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. The Freshman, with little coding experience, decided to create our sample Wix pages and used basic HTML and CSS coding to make them a little bit more customizable to our needs. My task was to use HTML, CSS, and Javascript to create the dashboard part of the application, where the patient and the doctor can view the overall health progress of the patient.

1:00PM: We broke to listen to a panel talk about their experiences in technology. The Panelists were all working at Indeed. They talked about their experiences in high school, college, how they decided to work in a technical job, their challenges, etc. It was very inspiring to hear them speak. After the panelists were done talking, I approached one of the panelists to ask about what she majored in, which was Computational Mathematics at UT Austin. She was very enthusiastic to explain what that entailed, which was mainly studying the mathematics behind programming and the mathematics behind modeling simulations with programs. It sounded AWESOME!!! As of now, I want to major in that, as it is the intersection of my two favorite subjects!

2:00PM: CODING TIME! I started to download templates from Bootstrap that best resembled a Dashboard. Then, my plan was to manipulate the code to best resemble our plan for the web app. I downloaded all the packages for one template and was about to change it.

2:30PM: I broke the record of how stupid one can be by doing this! I had downloaded the html, the css, and the javascript files. For some reason, I had opened up the CSS sheet and was looking for where the variables were defined so that I could change them. If you all read my previous blogs, you guys will understand that CSS is just a programming language that makes things look pretty. Half-an-hour went by, until I realized my really dumb mistake and opened up the Javascript.

3:00PM: I downloaded the most gorgeous text editor ever, Sublime, to make coding a little easier! The beautiful color scheme motivated me to code, despite all the failures. Below are some pictures that show how beautiful Sublime is.

That is a small section of the code that I manipulated and worked on. Doesn’t it look beautiful???

4:00PM: I almost died of a panic attack! For some reason, when I changed a variable, the whole graph was not showing up on the html page! I was frantic and anxiously read my code over again. Of Course, it was a silly mistake of forgetting to change one variable, but it was still scary.

6:00PM: I am done with the dashboard!!!! YAYAYAYAY!!!!!! To reward myself, I go for a quick walk to get some free chips that Indeed has put out for its employees and us. It was a much-needed break.

7:00PM: We work on our presentation and pitch idea while eating Pizza for dinner. It was pretty solid, and I was very proud of us!!! Here is the link to the Presentation to anyone who wants to see it.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OtYkhE74hduHTfWXrG9JKDvmHjLtXQW7UF6oe-KFKFs/edit?usp=sharing

8:00PM: We presented!!! It was a great presentation, and once again, I was proud of all of us!

8:30PM: The winners are announced! Though we did not win, I am very happy for the applications and websites that did win first, second, and third place!

9:00PM: I depart the hackathon with a whole lot of free stickers, a free shirt, new friends, and extended knowledge of Computer Science. This all girls Hackathon really did motivate me, and other girls to go into Computer Science and Computer Science related fields. For once, hackathons were not dominated by men, but by us girls. It really a great experience for me, and has taught me a lot about conceiving an idea, programming, pitching an idea, etc. I hope I have the opportunity to go again next year, because I would in a heartbeat.