In a packed room in MIT’s Stata Center, hundreds of digital robots collide across a giant screen projected at the front of the room. A crowd of students in the audience gasps and cheers as the battle’s outcome hangs in the balance. In an upper corner of the screen, the people who have programmed the robot armies’ strategies narrate the action in real time. This isn’t the latest e-sports event, it’s MIT’s long-running Battlecode competition. Open to student teams around the world, Battlecode tasks participants with writing the code to…
