This is a humble request to the CodeChef authorities to extend the submission date of the CodeChef API Hackathon powered by Alibaba Cloud by about 5 days to 26 September 2018.
Most of the colleges have their mid-semester examinations starting this upcoming Monday. With about 2 days left, we need ample time to prepare for them. It will not be possible to work side-by-side on the Hackathon during the mid-semester examinations. For most of the participants, CodeChef API Hackathon was a first-time experience in developing such applications. The CodeChef API was introduced for the first time and I am sure it took the CodeChef community a lot of time to get their hands on it. Working on the hackathon required complete knowledge of using the CodeChef API, learning new languages, handling POST and GET requests and a lot of other things. It required an overwhelming amount of time to get familiar with things and start creating the application.
We are grateful to CodeChef and Alibaba Cloud for organizing the CodeChef API Hackathon that made us a learn a lot of useful things which otherwise we might never have thought of but at the same time a humble appeal to consider my above request.
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@rounak217, we’ll get back to you soon on this.
UPDATE : Deadline for the submission has been extended to 1st October, 2018 00:00 IST.
All the best. Cheers! \m/
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@abhijeetpandey 
@rounak217
Your exams were supposed to start from Monday (assuming 17th sep). That still leaves you with ample time to prepare for the hackathon.
Many people participating in the hackathon would also be the ones who have to go to work daily (like me) and can only work for this hackathon on weekends and late nights.
I have spent 3 weekends and many weekday nights on this hackathon assuming the previous submission deadline. I even left out some features in my hack because I couldn’t get enough time.
Moreover, we won’t be there in person to present the demo, which means that the hack should be well tested and as bug-free as possible. Hence we (my team) made a schedule to first code and then test (bug fixing).
Now as the deadline is extended, I cannot implement the missing features as they will again require testing from scratch. Also, if someone decides to start late, can be benefitted from this extension which is an unfair advantage.
I mean to say that all people have different problems and the contest should not be extended. I think 25 days are not less. Most hackathons are of very less duration as compared to this. It would not be fair to many people who adjusted their daily routine (like me) just to meet the deadline, only finding just 2 days before (without any contact or email) that the deadline is extended.
I hope that you will consider this.
Thanks
@tanmaydatta, you have a fair concern. Thanks for sharing it with us. We’d like to help you understand why we agreed with the community and extended the contest deadline.
- Exam is not the only concern, the other concern is, people not knowing how to participate and it’s taking time for them to bootstrap and get a hang of what needs to be done. (You can checkout the kind of questions which are being posted on this forum)
- CodeChef has organised a Hackathon for the first time. We don’t want candidates to fall behind because they don’t know a particular technology or how to implement a certain thing. We want to help them, so that they can turn their ideas into prototypes.
- We found that extending deadline won’t harm anyone. Instead,
– it gives some more time to the candidates who are ready with their hacks (like you) to improve them and,
– at least a chance to those who couldn’t do anything because it took time for them to learn and implement things or those who started late.
- Also, we are going to communicate this to the users via an email so that everyone’s aware of it.
There are two more weekends and we hope that you’d be able to add what you wanted to have in your hack. 
Please let us know if you have any concerns.
Cheers!
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