Company Uses Reality TV-Style Competition to Measure Benefits of Real-Time Collaboration over Traditional Development

BOULDER, Colo. (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) May 8, 2008 -- Are two heads really better than one? N-BRAIN, Inc. intends to definitively answer this question by sponsoring the Hydra Versus Dragon Coding Competition, a Reality TV-style battle between the world's finest software developers.

Software developers have been working alone for 40 years

The contest begins June 23 and offers Java software developers a chance to win more than $7,000 in prizes. Prizes include a fully loaded Mac Book Pro from Apple Computer, UNA licenses and hosting from N-BRAIN and Virtacore, Subversion hosting from CVSDude, and agile training from Industrial Logic.

The largest spectator event in the history of software development competitions, the contest is designed to draw tens of thousands of viewers from the global software development community. Viewers can track the progress of their favorite teams in online episodes delivered daily over the span of two weeks. The episodes will feature highlights from actual coding sessions, as developers race against the clock trying to solve fiendishly difficult problems. The episodes will be narrated by industry veterans, who will analyze and comment on the approaches taken by the different teams. Viewers of the episodes will be able to rate teams, which helps to determine the winner of the competition.

Qualifying contestants compete in teams of two. All teams compete in the Dragon style for one problem, and the Hydra style for a different problem. In the Dragon style, each team works to solve the problem using a single-user edition of UNA, communicating through e-mail, and using a shared version control repository. In the Hydra style, each team works to solve a different problem using the real-time collaborative edition of UNA, communicating using UNA itself.

The Dragon style mimics how software has been developed for the past few decades, while the Hydra style represents N-BRAIN's approach to software development, which emphasizes working together in real-time as a way to increase quality and lower costs.

"Software developers have been working alone for 40 years," says John A. De Goes, president of N-BRAIN. "Now for the first time in history, it's possible for engineers to develop software together, in real-time, using UNA. We hope this competition will showcase the inspiring power of real-time collaboration, and also bring software developers together to participate in a thrilling new form of entertainment — Reality TV for geeks."

Team submissions are passed through an automated test suite, then assigned a score based on the number of passing tests, the time taken from contest start until program submission, and the rating given to the team by viewers of the competition. Each member of the winning team receives the full suite of prizes, while all participants receive a free license to UNA Personal Edition (a value of $100).

For more information, or to apply for the competition, visit http://www.n-brain.net.

About N-BRAIN, Inc.

N-BRAIN, Inc. is a privately held software development company headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. It was founded on the belief that collaboration is the greatest asset in the promotion of efficiency and the elimination of waste. The company creates tools that empower developers to collaborate in ways never before realized. For more information, visit http://www.n-brain.net or call 877-376-2724 ext. 101.

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