A few months ago, we created a new Discord channel - a real time chat app - for Repl.it. We've since expanded our user count to be well over 500. Our Discord server is community-driven - we have a team of three users who help us moderate the server and facilitate a culture of friendly collaboration and sharing knowledge. However, our favorite outcome of this community are the code jams.
Code jams are basically online hackathons that span from 24 to 48 hours long. Each code jam has a theme which is revealed to its participants at the beginning of the event. Each user creates a submission based on the given theme; their submissions must be created and developed during the code jam (no using previous work).
From these code jams, we've seen some incredible work created in a small amount of time. But more importantly, we've been able to see the best of our community through its interactions. Participants had their own #code-jam channel in which they could discuss the jam, their work, and any questions that they had. Make no mistake - it was a competition - and they wanted to win. But that didn't stop them from helping out their fellow competitors debug their programs, provide feedback, and test our their work.
Our latest code jam wrapped up last weekend, where users made single player games. The winner was clear - @theangryepicbanana made a game called Switch using p5.js. The mods who graded this game thought it was original, fun to play, and well polished.
A demonstration of the game is below - or play it yourself here!
Other sample submissions, in no particular order:
These code jams were organized, executed, and judged entirely by the Discord moderators - we would like to personally thank @Mosrod and @21natzil (Zwack) for their hard work.
If you're interested in joining us in our next code jam sometime in the next month, join our Discord server with this invite link!
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