HACK TJ 2k17 - Students

Student Interviews

Austin Shi- 9th Grade TJHSST

What did you find interesting at the Hackathon?

The amount of people was very stunning, never used to seeing so many people in a small area that were coding at the same time

Did you go to any of the workshops?

Big Parser; It was all just a blur, it was kind of fast for my comprehension. I could tell that the people lecturing there were really hard working and dedicated. They were talking how to implement APIs.

Do you think this will help you in your future life of coding?

Yes, I aspire to be a computer software engineer in the future, so hopefully by participating in this hackathon I can use that in the future.

Sophia Wang- 9th Grade TJHSST

As a freshman, how was your first Hackathon?

It has been really fun, for one I did not expect the amount of free stuff we got, but it is really nice to have to chance to go to the workshops and stations. It is a fun experience.

What workshops did you visit?

I went to the Big parser and the Women in Technology one. What I learned was you could use CS to do anything you want to do and the tech field, there are not many women in the tech field, but that will probably change in time.

Ian Reyes, Duc Toan Tran - 12th Grade Woodson

How is your second time coming to a Hackathon different from your first time? What will you do for your project this time?

We were kind of aimless, we did not know what we were going to do, and we did not have much of an idea. For our second time, we are focusing on using different APIs.

Elizabeth Hu - 12th Grade TJHSST

How was your first experience in a Hackathon?

I am liking it so far, it is kind of what I expected

Did you go to any of the workshops? What did you learn there?

I went to one of the workshops; I went to Breaking into Tech. I just sort of learned more about the industry. It was pretty eye-opening to know the different paths and options you have in tech, and have to make it in there, and everything you have to do in college to make it to that point.

What project is your team making?

Our team is working on a municipal problem clean up app, where people can report incidents they see like a sidewalk that needs to be paved, road-kill, or a fallen tree, this app will geo-tag these places along with pictures and descriptions. Governors and officials can use this app to hold clean up events. There is a volunteer option in our app, which I think is useful to having a cleaner community.

Ruyan Zhang- 12th Grade TJHSST

How is the first Hackathon for you going?

I like it, I like having free food, and at least for me, having a couple of hours to sit and code while really getting into it helps me, and there are a lot of people from not necessarily TJ and different age groups, and people who are better than me in coding and can help me.

What project are you working on? How will this app/website help the community?

Data approach to quiz bowl (academic trivia competition), teach the computer to play against the students by searching for specific keywords for questions. Targeted towards quiz bowl community, robot will have more ability to ask questions humans may not have found.

Evan Howard - 9th Grade TJHSST

How is the first Hackathon for you going?

Pretty fun, met a new guy to make my team, pretty hard since I just learned an intro language, but I feel a bit better and by the end we will be pretty proud of the product.

Do you think the classes you have taken at TJ so far have helped you today?

Yeah, definitely, I have definitely drawn a lot of knowledge from the computer science course I took. I barely knew the language in the beginning of the year, now I am able to code.

What is your basic product idea?

Map that shows all the countries, unemployment data, shade in countries depending on state, all different kinds of data, shows trends over time in regions

William Wang, Steven Qu- 10th Grade Blair

How is the first Hackathon for you going?

It is a new experience, very eye-opening, lots of new things I did not expect, but a lot of things I prepared for.

Any difficulties?

Yes, a lot of difficulties, mostly on the idea side, because it took a long time for us to focus in on what specific thing we were going to produce and pursue. It was hard, especially given the short amount of time we were given.

Is it better to have more hacking experience at a Hackathon?

This project, at this time, is not very similar to my previous projects, but it is definitely easier by having experience.

What is your project about?

Centered on the idea of an AI chat bot, geared towards politicians, federal level politicians so many questions, hard to adequately respond to many interests that only require short answers, construct a chat bot professionally for politicians across multiple messaging systems

Alex Marwaha - 12th Grade TJHSST

What is your project about?

Taking articles from medical journals, combining them into one place, targets people who need to save time while discussing research, clinical trials