Some of the world’s top software engineering researchers arrived in Limerick for the World of Code Hackathon at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software.

According to Lero Director Prof Brian Fitzgerald: “The World of Code is the most significant software codebase globally with contributions from more than 50 million developers. Lero is delighted to be chosen to host this hackathon on the World of Code – a first for Europe. It is a great opportunity for our students to showcase their abilities on a world stage.”

The two-day hackathon, as explained by Prof Fitzgerald, is a sprint-like design event where experts in the world of computer programming collaborate intensively on software projects with the goal of creating a functioning software prototype by the close of the event.

Dr Tapajit Dey, a postdoctoral research fellow at Lero and a former student of Dr Audris Mockus, the creator of World of Code, played an instrumental role in hosting the hackathon at Lero. Participants of the hackathon arrived from Limerick, Cork, and Galway, and they are eagerly looking forward to interacting with Dr Mockus, who is visiting Limerick for the event, according to Prof Fitzgerald.

Dr Mockus, who works at Meta and is a Professor of Digital Archaeology and Evidence Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Tennessee, USA, is a well-known figure in the field of software engineering research for his seminal work on open source software. He studies software developers’ culture and behaviour through the recovery, documentation, and analysis of digital remains, which reflect collective and individual activity.

Attendees at the Hackathon at Lero on the University of Limerick campus will also participate in the annual  ‘mining challenge’ competition organised by the Mining Software Repositories conference, a well-known conference in the software engineering world.

Several projects in previous World of Code Hackathons have resulted in the publication of academic papers at prestigious conferences worldwide.