Projects / UofTHacks 11
Podium #2Overall UofTHacks Second Place WinnerCSEConfidence: medium
BASIC Web
A from-scratch BASIC compiler and runtime for building interactive web pages.
Project facts
- Team
- 4 people
- Build
- software only
- AI
- none
Problem
Nostalgia theme: modern web development is buried under frameworks; what if you could build for the web with 1960s-simple imperative code?
Solution
A TypeScript parser, compiler and runtime that turns BASIC programs into HTML, with the project's own website written in BASIC and shipped via CI to GitHub Pages as a single bundled file.
Demo moment
Open a to-do app and reveal it was written entirely in BASIC.
Why it stood out
- team statedMost of the team had no compiler experience and built parser, IR and runtime in 36 hours — visible, verifiable depth.Source ↗
- curator inferenceTheme answered through a programming language rather than a retro UI skin.
- team statedShipped, not mocked: deployed site, CI/CD and dependency scanning.Source ↗
- organizer statedWon two prizes (overall 2nd and a sponsor prize), showing one project can stack a main-rubric win with a sponsor lane.Source ↗
Lessons for your next hackathon
- A no-AI project with genuine depth can out-place AI wrappers; depth is most persuasive when the demo proves it (the site itself is BASIC).
Similar situations
Projects that share domains, mechanisms or judging lenses — often with a different problem and stack.Tune the comparison.
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Runner-up · 2026
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Sources
- https://devpost.com/software/basic-web · devpost project · retrieved 2026-09-14 — Story, stack and prize list.
- https://uofthacks-11.devpost.com/project-gallery · devpost gallery · retrieved 2026-09-14