Raghu Mohan

Honeywell's mobility hackathon has just concluded on HackerEarth, and we have three winners. Congrats to all winners! Top performers in the hackathon have already been offered with positions at Honeywell. This was a 2-stage Hackathon - the first stage was an online hackathon, which saw over 2500 people participate, and the second stage was an online/offline hackathon that saw people in Bangalore hack at the Honeywell office.

The hackathon attracted a lot of participation from all over India, and it was particularly special because many experienced professionals built applications and participated in the spirit of hackathons. Interesting submissions were made, and only 30 made it to the next round. From the second phase, there were three winners.



The winners of the hackathon were





All shortlisted candidates will be contacted over the week with updated on job offers and selections. Congrats to all the winners!

Check out all upcoming challenges here - https://www.hackerearth.com/challenges/

It is with a heavy heart that we're bidding farewell, to one of the first challenge series that we launched on HackerEarth. As of May, we are officially retiring the HackerEarth monthly challenge. The monthly challenge has given us many fond memories, and for many of our users.

Over the last year, thousands of programmers from over 60 countries have engaged with HackerEarth's Monthly challenges. We've had specific winners from 15 different countries. Over 10,000 code compilations and the it's impressive statistics could go on forever!

So, here we are, at the end - May-hem. It's almost fitting, given the chaotic nature of competitive programming. This will be a short 2 hour contest on 30th May, 2015. There will be 5 algorithmic problems of varying difficulty level. This contest is open for all.

There are great prizes to be won -

1st Prize - $50 Amazon gift card

First Runner Up - $30 Amazon gift card

Second Runner Up - $20 Amazon gift card

Top 5 winners will receive HackerEarth T-shirt .

Contributors:

Problem Setter & Editorialist- Ankit Srivastava
Problem Tester - Lam Phan Viet

HackerEarth monthly challenges will continue through the easy and clash challenges. Watch this space for more updates from these challenges. Furthermore, if you're a beginner programmer, HackerEarth has started a bi-weekly learning track just for you. Check out CodeMonk!

Note: In order to be able to claim your prizes, your HackerEarth profile must be completed more than 50%.

Also don't forget to RSVP at the Facebook event page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1588572158089203/

For those who've been following the HackerEarth platform over the past few months, you might have noticed a neat little product that we recently launched - AMA (ask me anything). It's an online forum where eminent people conduct open discussions with our developer community. We ran a few top-quality AMAs in the past, but we kept it low key to validate the usefulness of the product. Initial reactions? Our developers loved it.

So after a few little steps, we took the proverbial giant leap. We called in the the chief architect of the soon-to-be world's largest biometric identification system - Aadhaar. And to join him, the stellar investor and chairman of India's first Twitter acquisition, who was also a key stakeholder in the Aadhaar project.

The result? Dr. Pramod Varma, chief architect of UIDAI, and Sanjay Swamy, managing partner of Angelprime Partners, spending 45 minutes answering over a hundred questions in what was possibly the first public, un-moderated discussion about Aadhaar, which was convened by its stakeholders.



In this AMA, we spoke scale:



We asked questions about security:



We asked questions about its future:



We spoke about possibilities:



We asked about security again:



We asked so many questions, that it slightly overwhelmed our guests:



Overall, it was a very new experience for our guests too. Dr. Pramod Varma said, "Amazing experience talking to developers via the HackerEarth AMA platform. Thoroughly enjoyed the rapid fire conversation. Wish we could spend more time with developer community like this. Thanks for this wonderful opportunity."

Sanjay tweeted his experience to the world as well:

https://twitter.com/theswamy/status/599530501888573440

AMAs on HackerEarth is going to be a regular update. Watch this space for more updates!

Don't forget to register for the Aadhaar Hackathon - https://www.hackerearth.com/sprints/aadhaar-application-hackathon/

It was back in 1982, when researchers at Carnegie Mellon University made a modified cola vending machine, which could report its inventory and also if newly loaded drinks were cold. From this point, right up to 2014, there have been visions, by various scientists and technologists, on communicating devices. It took the maturing of the mobile ecosystem for the coining of one of the hottest buzzwords in the tech industry today - Internet of Things.

The concept of electronic devices which can share information over a network to people or other devices have existed since the days of RFID. However, it wasn’t until the emergence and adoption of wearables, namely activity bands and smart watches, that manufacturers really started to entertain the idea of doing the same with other devices. Now there are many applications to the concept and massive backing from their respective industries and even the governments.

By 2020, it is estimated that the number of connected devices will be anywhere between 26-30 billion. And building this network of devices will be IoT engineers. So what does it take to be an IoT engineer? Learn one of these four skills, and you’ve got a good chance of being one.

Hardware



The “things” component in IoT is essentially electronic or electromechanical devices. The knowledge of embedded systems electronics design, fabrication technologies, measurement systems and mechanics. IoT teams will typically consist of hardware experts who understand the physical working of the machines and if you’ve got skill sets aligned to this, you’ve got a good chance of finding yourself in an IoT team.

All IoT devices will have a prime focus on communication and there will be lot of scope for hardware engineers in communication devices. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other connectivity solutions, computer-aided design, micro-electromechanical systems engineering, wireless sensor design, and quality assurance, are some other hardware aspects that will be valuable for IoT engineering.

Software



Embedded software is more important than ever now. Every device will need to have intelligence and communication capabilities. Embedded software, which was used to great effect in automobiles and aeroplanes, is now being used in most devices. Embedded software is making machines smarter and this will be at the heart of the Internet of Things movement.

However, there are many who’re saying that just programmers won’t do anymore. It will more important to think like a software architect, to understand where the software fits into the scheme of the whole system. Also, with platforms like Android and iOS tailoring themselves for other devices, other computer science languages like Objective C, Java, Python etc. will be relevant IoT skills, but only when it supplements an architect mindset.

Data Sciences



When we talk smart devices, which interact with the external environment, we’re talking sensors. And when we talk sensors, we’re talking massive amounts of data. The importance of the data scientist has been on the ascension over the past few years and the IoT era will only cement their emphasis on the computing world.

Sensors are going to generate a lot of data and it will be up to the data scientists to make sense of it. The growth in capabilities of IoT systems largely depends on how data is interpreted and used. Experience of working with big data platforms and data warehousing tools will be greatly valued too.

Data security



A lot of the data that will be exchanged within IoT systems will be sensitive user data. Forbes recently commented - “We have created a whole new playground for attackers to dream up things to do — whether it is nuisance, whether it is theft, or whether it is violence.” And this is not just paranoia talking - the plethora of ways in which your data can be exploited is a possibility today.

Location data from your smartphone, your health data from your smart bands, and we’re just getting started. Now what happens, when this is your car? Or even your home? Securing this data is going to be a matter of life and death and cyber security engineers are going to be pivotal in keeping the sanctity of the ecosystem

Singapore, the city-state, has the reputation of being the home to one of the most conscientious people in the world. They’re hard workers - it is said that an average Singaporean works as much as 45 hours a week, which is longer than in most parts of the world. Surveys also suggest that 3 out of 4 Singaporeans take pride in the work that they do.

This 227 square kilometer island houses just over 5 million people, but has a 0.091 human development index - this is the 9th in the world. No wonder, the Singapore developer community boasts of some of the best programming talent in the world.

Here are 5 developers from Singapore that you must know a bit about!



Andrew “Bunnie” Huang

A simple Google search for the keyword Bunnie, will lead you to the Wikipedia page of Andrew Huang, who’s also affectionately known as Bunnie. This MIT grad, who has a PhD in electrical engineering has done and is doing some really cutting-edge stuff in computer programming.

From being the hardware lead for Chumby to designing the world's first fully integrated photonic-silicon chips running at 10 Gbit/s with Luxtera, Inc. to building some of the first prototype hardware for silicon nanowire device research with Caltech, Bunnie has donned many hats. He has also participated in the design of wireless transceivers for use in 802.11b and Bluetooth networks with Mobilian, graphics chips at Silicon Graphics, digital cinema codecs at Qualcomm, and autonomous robotic submarines during the 1999 competition held by the AUVSI that the MIT team won. And that’s not even everything he’s done till date!

He’s now known for being one half of the brain behind Novena, an open-source computing platform. It is dubbed as the world’s first open source laptop.

Follow Bunnie here - https://twitter.com/bunniestudios

Arun Thampi

Arun is one of NUS’s many success stories. Before graduating, Arun had already interned with 2 of the forerunners in mobile technology - Motorola and Palm. After graduating, Arun took the startup route and became one of Wego’s first employees, which is now one of the largest travel companies in the world.

After Wego, Arun spent some time experimenting with other startup ideas, before Nitrous IO. The company, which offers a cloud development platform, has been functional for the last 2 years and has raised over 7 million dollars in funding.

When not at work, Arun is a traveller and an avid Manchester United fan, who one day wishes to catch a match at Old Trafford.

Follow Arun here - https://twitter.com/iamclovin

Erwan Mace

Calling Erwan a technology enthusiast will be far from doing justice to his 16-year -ong illustrious career. From holding senior technology positions in some of the world’s biggest companies like Alcatel, Akamai, Vivendi, and Google, to guiding successful startup exits, namely Spray (acquired by Lycos in 2000) and Soundbuzz (acquired by Motorola in 2008), Erwan has done it all.

He currently runs a Singapore-based mobile application development company which he started in 2009. The company is behind some really innovative apps, some of which have been downloaded over 10 million times, which you can check out here - http://www.bitsmedia.com/products

Follow Erwan here - https://twitter.com/erwanmace

Calvin Cheng

Calvin is the quintessential community hacker. When he’s not leading the technology team at the medical tech startup AlgoAccess, he is a part of many community-based projects like hackersandpainters.sg, golang.sg, python.sg, LittleMakers.ccand LittleHackers.com, and Tripconomics.com.

He’s quite well-known for lending a helping hand to startups. He is an expert in Python, Golang, Javascript, and Objective C. In his blog, he writes, “As a hacker, I have learnt a lot from my peers and stackoverflow and github are awesome resources that I use every day.”

Before his time as a programmer, this 38-year-old engineer used to be a Cascade Refrigeration Product Lead.

Follow Calvin here - https://twitter.com/calvinchengx

Loong Jin Chow

Loong Jin Chow is the youngest person on this list. He graduated in 2011, but has a body of work of someone who has been in the industry far longer. His contributions to the Linux ecosystem is right up there with any other top programmer in the field.

Loong currently works for Red Hat. He’s spent about 2 years at the company, but his work with Canonical goes back a long time. He’s been a Debian developer, an Ubuntu developer, and a package maintainer at Canonical. His contributions to the ecosystem have been recognized by NTU too, where he is the technical director at the NTU open source society.

He is also one of the Masters of the Universe (MOTU) at Ubuntu. ‘Nuff said.

Follow Loong here - https://twitter.com/hyperair

If you're a developer in Singapore, then you must take part in this cool challenge - http://hck.re/tSKgt3