Sophilabs Hosts Robocode Montevideo

This week, Robocode Montevideo held its very first meetup at sophilabs' office in Montevideo. Robocode is a programming game in which players develop robots in Java or .NET and have them battle each other on screen in real time. Bearing the motto, "Build the best – destroy the rest!", Robocode provides a fun way for developers to learn, collaborate, and build community. We were happy to host the first gathering of this Meetup group and help them have a successful kickoff.

"Build the best – destroy the rest!"

The evening began with a talk by Robocode Montevideo founder (and sophilabs Data Engineer) Javier Ayres, who explained the basics of Robocode and how the game works. Although players program their robot battle tanks, they don't directly control the game. Instead, as the Robocode website explains, they "must write the AI of the robot telling it how to behave and react to events occurring in the battle arena." ¹ This presents a true challenge that allows developers to learn a lot while building their robots. Robocoders share ideas, code, and algorithms on the RoboWiki, so there's a lot of support for players who are new to programming robots.

After Javier's talk, attendees downloaded Robocode to their computers and began coding their own robots. Everyone was enthusiastic about getting started, and the event went on until just after 11:00 p.m. While no robot battles took place quite yet, this new group of Robocoders made progress in building their robots and will continue programming them at future gatherings. At sophilabs, we're looking forward to the next meetup of Robocode Montevideo and hope this great community will keep growing.