The Fast and The Curious Hackathon

Introduction

This repository contains the code for The Fast and The Curious Hackathon. This hackathon is based around the dual themes of optimising code for speed and the use of Generative AI tools to assist with programming. It is written primarily in Python, but does not assume advanced levels of programming, and many of the techniques presented can be applied to other languages.

Pre-Session Work

In order to follow this hackathon, you will need to have a GitHub account. If you don't have one, you can sign up for free. You will also need to enable Github Copilot in your Github account. This is, by default, a paid-for feature, but it is also available for free to students and educators through Github Education. You can register for this here. It may take a few days for your application to be approved, so it is best to apply at least a week in advance.

There are several Jupyter notebooks (the files with the extension .ipynb) present in this repository. You may review them in advance if you want to, but you aren't required to.

Opening a Codespace

This hackathon is designed to run inside of a Codespace. A Codespace is a development environment hosted by GitHub directly from a repository. To use this, you will need to be signed into a GitHub account. To open the Codespace, click the green Code button at the top right of the repository. Make sure you're in the Codespaces tab and click the Create New Codespace on Master button. This will create a Codespace of your own. This will take a minute or so to initialise. You may be asked to reload the page. If so, do reload the page. If the Codespace seems to get stuck loading, reloading the page can often fix the problem.

Once your Codespace has initialised, it will remain associated with your GitHub account for around a month, when it will expire. Your Codespace will be given a name like "fuzzy-barnacle" so you can identify it. To reopen it on a future occasion, click the Code button again, then select the Codespace, click Open, then Open in Browser.

To download the content of the files within the Codespace, open the Files tab on the left, select the files, right click and click Download button. Alternatively, if you're familiar with GitHub, you can open the source control tab on the left, you can commit and push changes. This will fork the repository with your changes. Either of these options will allow you to keep a copy of the course notes with your solutions to the exercises, etc.