Sapo Codebits 2007 – The Summary Part 1
Posted: November 19th, 2007The Talks/Workshops
* Amazon WebServices Architecture by Mike Culver – I learned more about S3 and I knew nothing about EC2 which is actually very interesting.
* IronPython and Dynamic Languages on .NET by Mahesh Prakriya – I missed it but a lot of people said it was brilliant.
* Building platforms by Fred Oliveira – I got to learn more about microformats, APIs and web scraping.
* Creating a game in 60 minutes (Criar jogo em 60 minutos) by Paulo Laureano – this one was inspirational 
the concept was mixing sample code using to create a game quickly. While actually creating a game took me between 6 and 8h that can be attributed to the lack of sample code to do certain things I wanted to do.
The Contest
For the first 6-8h or so I worked with Celso Pinto and Armando Alves on an idea by Samuel Martins – Sapo Boa Vida. Andreia Gaita helped me a bit with some peculiarities of DOM. My code fetched the information from Sapo GIS.
Later my code was converted to PHP by Celso and I went on to work on my game project (the one inspired by Paulo Laureano’s workshop) while Samuel started with the PHP and Celso went home. I only interrupted my work on my game project, Kill All Squares, to help Samuel with PHP’s DOM – Celso’s conversion of my code was a bit too literal and as Joao from the Sapo Team found out, PHP’s DOM is a bit more peculiar (strict) requiring the NS to be specified.
Sapo Boa Vida eventually won one of the prizes (the prize for the best Mashup).
People
I met a lot of people – many from prt.sc and from the Sapo Team but also others. Some caused a very good impression. I got a lot of good tips, advice and even help in the contest (from the people I already mentioned).
I probably would’ve had more time for the contest and would’ve been able to work on a 3rd project (there were other ideas) but one of the big points in going to this kind of events is talking to other people.