Hack the future is a one day hackathon in which students normally combine in teams to tackle various IT related challenges. This year at least one person signed up solo, namely me. the option to form no team being so unthinkable the system broke down somewhat processing my admission.
The actual challenge I signed up for was one involving PL/SQL, an Oracle specific variant of SQL that adds various Procedural Programming features.
Most of the challenge was structured as Capture-The-Flag assignments, many of them following on each other. I was expecting to go down with dishonor considering my solo admission, but this was only partially the case, although I still ranked low.
More surprisingly, there were two prizes to be won for every challenge. One for ranking first and one for a presentation which we were to give at the end of the challenge. I titled my presentation “Reflections of an Actual Impostor” and made observations from the point of view of a former IT student whom switched away to a technical degree. Somewhat fortunately for me the other students misunderstood the assignment somewhat and the challenge was sparsely populated, so I had a premonition I could actually win a prize.
This turned out to be correct. I won a few things, such as a powerbank and a desk lamp. I also got a 3d printed trophy, and of course a nice photograph with the people who organized the challenge.
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