Hash Code Experience - MAL Hub 2018

Nothing good comes easy, with consistency and best practice, nothing is impossible. On 1st March 2018, 18:30pm - 22:30pm, some passionate developers from Kwara State team up to contest in the Online Qualification Round for Google Hash Code at MAL Hub Nigeria.

Afrikal team lead @jalasem with other contestants

An unforgettable competition experience which encouraged team spirit and compassion in achieving common objectives. The problem statement was about assigning rides to a number of self driving vehicles. It was a bit confusing though, one needs to understand the algorithms to use before jumping into writing code.

In the beginning, things look pretty cool for the team while they await the problem statement. A total of eight team registered to contest from MAL Hub. The competition started in a friendly mood when every contestants discussed about their score expectations and how they intend to solve the problem as fast as they can, not knowing things may fall apart.

After several minutes of analysing the problem statement, it took about an hour before a team called Afrikal come up with a solution. A team lead by Ajala Abdulsamii with his partner Awoyemi Afeez and the other two members who partook remotely.

A lot of team have submitted, the leader board already have 49 million point. 30 minutes left to the submission deadline before the Afrikal team lead Ajala Abdulsamii gave a statement of hope to inspire other contestant, he said:

"though the time is running out, but i believe our team will be on the scoreboard, lets put our resources together to achieve our aim, we have all tried." this statement serve as a fuel to an empty vehicle tank.

After running the first solution, an error popped up, he debugged until the final code run successful which scored 105,607 points. This was so emotional, the contestant were very excited and they celebrated with the team lead. What a beautiful moment! The team managed to submit as the only team from MAL Hub.

The awe isn't about the score, it about being able to give a solution that could be submitted to the Google scoreboard, the team lead wasn't too impressed with the score which made him set out to optimize his code but the time elapsed and he couldn't submit to the official first round scoreboard. The optimized version later got a total of 11,789,358 points which was submitted to the extended round scoreboard.

The guy who saved the night @jalasem with Femi Babalola, active contestant of the team

He was very happy but never satisfied with the score. He gave a motivational speech to everyone and rounded up with this statement:

"Lets all prepare ourselves for next year's #hashcode. Lets see this as a motivation to do better and make it to the finals next year"

Abdul Samii Ajala was indeed the true hero of the night, we all learnt from him, he is indeed a true leader who is always ready to add value to people’s life.

Photos
View the full album of the event at Google Photos

Appreciation
Special thanks to Lascot Photography

© MAL Hub Nigeria