Want a chance to score a Microsoft Xbox (with Kinect), Surface Tablet, Kinect Bundle, IntelliJ and ReSharper?

All you have to do is sign up and compete in the most exciting programming contest in the world.

The Windward Code Wars

Code Wars is one of the leading coding contests (super hackathon) for college students. You spend a day creating an A.I. character for fun. Then you support each other as you compete against other teams. The top two teams from each school advance to the international championships. These championships decide which computer science school is the best in the world.

And it’s all done through cyberspace – Harvey Mudd students compete without leaving the Harvey Mudd campus, Purdue students compete without leaving the Purdue campus, etc. – so virtually anyone can participate. Last year participants included MIT, Stanford, Carnagie-Mellon, University of Toronto, and more.

Code Wars Prizes

This January 26, 2013, you can not only kick ass in the contest; you can win some sweet prizes:

  • A Microsoft Surface Tablet for every student on the winning team
  • A Microsoft Kinect for every student on the 2nd and 3rd place teams
  • A free copy of IntelliJ for every student on each school’s 1st place team
  • A free copy of ReSharper for every student on each school’s 1st place team
  • A free academic copy of Windward AutoTag for every student who participates
  • A free copy of the Windward development server (Java and .NET versions) for every student who participates

Win your School the World Championship

If you win or place second in your school’s contest on Saturday, you can upload your code to Windward. On Sunday, January 27, all the winning teams will compete for the title of World Champion. This will give your school bragging rights as the top computer science department in the world.

And your school gets this super-sweet glass sailboat trophy. (The trophy is so stunning, the football team will be jealous – don’t rub it in… too much.)

Yes, Freshman can Dominate

Code Wars rewards strategy and problem solving rather than simply coding. So what if you’re a first year student; you can compete against grad students.

And win!

It’s like if the contest was to write the A.I. for a chess game (it isn’t; you won’t know the challenge until that day). And one team has four awesome programmers. And the other has one person who has taken one programming class – but is a chess grandmaster. That 1-person team has a huge advantage. The key to a winning A.I. is the strategic approach you come up with.

Sign up to Compete

Still not sure Code Wars is for you? Check out what a blast teams had last year:

Get your team signed up now and add players as needed

Oh, and sign up by December 25 and you’ll be entered in a drawing for a Microsoft Xbox with Kinect and 4 controllers.