An API, an Ecosystem, a movement

When services like Codeacademy launched, its implications to the world of computer education was quite immense. There was now, a code editor on the Internet, which allowed you to learn and practice programming, without having to worry about cumbersome installations and system compatibilities.

The schools particularly loved it. Installing software on all machines wasn’t something that pleased the IT admins, but a website solved many of the problems that permissions posed. In fact, the concept of coding on a browser was so popular, that people and companies started launching full fledged IDEs on browsers; some of them clock many hours of usage.

Soon, products like our own, at HackerEarth, and others like Codechef and HackerRank took this concept a step forward, by  building a competitive platform, where the best programmers in the world get together to keep their skills sharp.

However, we’re seeing another revolution in the realm of personal computing and how the world interacts with the internet on the whole. Devices are becoming smaller and tablet and mobile devices are becoming more powerful. At the same time, the world is interacting with the web through applications as well, and the trend is growing quite rapidly across various ecosystems.

At this juncture, we at HackerEarth have chosen to enable this ecosystem with some of our technology that we have spent a good few years building. We have made our code checking engine available to use as an API to a small group of beta champions, who have gone on to build apps on which you can compile code on the go.

We’ve got 3 apps, 2 for Android and one for (surprise surprise!) for Mozilla’s Gecko platform, which allows you to code on your mobile devices on the go. Some of our awesome beta users have even gone on to build a VIM plugin using our API. Check them out –

1. Online compiler (Android)

2. Codeaway (Android)

3. CodeIt (Mozilla)

4. VIM plugin (GitHub)

Quite a few in the community said that exposing such an API wouldn’t see much traction, as it was ambitious to think that people would code on their mobile phones. While they weren’t completely wrong, we saw cumilatively, close to 50000 downloads and over 100000 compilations using these apps. We think that it’s a start 😉

We urge more people to make use of this API and help in building a future, where personal devices like mobile phones and tablets can also be used to build software. It isn’t there yet, but it will get there eventually. How fast it gets there, is completely up to you; the developer community.

If you wish to make apps using our awesome API, checkout our developer page or give vivek@hackerearth.com a shout, and he will help you out.

Raghu Mohan Author 58 Blogs