In June 2023, our company hosted its inaugural global hackathon that aimed to discover which AI Assisted Development tool is most effective for Java Developers. The participating teams were given a challenging problem statement and only a limited time to complete it with either the assistance of one of Tabnine, Copilot, or Starchat. A number of groups acted as the control and completed the challenge unaided.
This lightning talk will demonstrate how Terraform, GitLab and AWS were used to provision and manage the virtual desktops, GitLab projects, and CICD pipelines that enabled the participants to reach their potential in the hackathon. The talk will explore the pitfalls and successes of using these technologies, and will discuss the somewhat surprising results of the hackathon.