MacMegasite Archive
   


To reduce the database size and server load, all articles from 2004 or earlier are archived here.


Return to MacMegasite



       

Sun, 23 Jun 2002

MacHack 17 wrap-up

MacHack 17 ended early this morning. The show was a success and lots of fun. MacHack provides an opportunity to learn a lot and meet old friends who return year after year.





This year, the "Yoots" were the real stars of the show. The Mac's future success depends on attracting enthusiastic young developers, and MacHack plays a big part in that. MacHack is unique among developer conferences since they make a special effort to attract young programmers as well as older & more experienced developers. John Penn does a great job of coordinating the "yoot" activities , which includes special sessions, discounted prices, and lots of free gifts. This year, all yoots got a free copy of CodeWarrior Pro 8 Academic edition and a subscription to MacHtech magazine.







I had an opportunity to meet a few talented yoots and I was very impressed by their ability.







I first met MacMegasite co-founder & staff member Justin Christie at last year's MacHack. He's a smart, talented and enthusiastic young programmer who wrote a nice HTML editor called CreativePage. I helped him out with a hack, but unfortunately we weren't able to finish it when both of our iBook batteries ran out during the Hack Show as we were trying to complete it.







Adam Atlas is one of the most brilliant 12 year olds I've ever met. He taught a session on RealBasic, and his hack took first place in the yoot division and second place overall, winning a free scholarship to next year's MacHack. I predict in a few years he'll be mentioned in the same breath with the old masters like Leonard Rosenthal.







Although I didn't get a chance to talk to him, Andy Furnas is one of the most illustrious yoots at MacHack. This is his 4th year at MacHack and he's the first yoot to join the yoot committee for next year's show.







As always, the Hack Show was the hilight of the conference. It started at midnight Friday night and ended before 5AM, which made it one of the shorter ones in MacHack history. The hacks ranged from videos to system tweaks. One of the more interesting ones was a remotely controlled iMac that kept moving around and popping out the CD ROM drive.







One amusing skit during the hack show was a variation of Monty Python's "dead parrot" bit inspired by a session called "The Future of Mac OS 9" (which consisted of almost a half hour filled with different ways of saying "it's dead").







Saturday's hilight was the awards banquet followed by a movie. Hacks are awarded cheesy gifts from Duke's Hardware related to the theme of the hack. This year we saw "The sum of all fears" in a private theater, which gave us an opportunity to heckle the movie in sort of a live-action Mystery Science Theater show. When we return, as always, Keith explains the movie in great detail during the ice cream social.







Although MacHack is lots of fun, there's also a more serious side as we get to learn lots of new technologies. Some of the more interesting sessions involved kernel extensions and other ways to extend Mac OS X. I gave a session on "Unix tips for Mac OS X Developers", which showed how using the command line can save time & simplify many tasks.







The "Bash Apple" & "Bash Metrowerks" sessions provided an opportunity to meet the developers and voice our opinions on what we'd like to see in future product versions.







MacHack is an interesting show that's well worth attending. It's a lot less expensive than Apple's WWDC (which I've only attended when I could get someone else to pay) and a lot more fun. The regular conference fee is $475 or $50 for "yoots" (students).



[] permanent link