For Yahoo’s hackday, I was able to finish up this script in Ruby that returns back search results from yelp and chowhound from Yahoo’s BOSS API. The great thing about it is that you can hit the API an unlimited number of times!
Here are a few notes that should help anybody the next time they attend a hackday – Yahoo’s or anyone else’s:
- The night before install libraries you think you won’t need. I really wish that I had prawnto installed. I got mired in prawnto idiosyncracies, and was out of the race pretty quick.
- Good coders are fast. According to Eran Lahav-Hammer, one of the authors of OAuth, good coders can code an OAuth implementation in the language of their choice in less than one day. Are you a good coder?
- Have fun! It’s a pretty rare opportunity to have so many folks in the industry in one spot.