Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?

#31

Post by catch23 » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 12:53 AM UTC

jorgeortiz85 wrote: post #19

Hey isqster, I'm Jorge and I work as a software engineer at Foursquare. I'm sorry to hear that you're frustrated at our hackathon. Certainly some people are chatting and socializing, but that's only natural when you put a lot of people in the same room. From what I can tell though, the vast majority of people are actually building something today. Some people have brought projects that they started before today, but…

One easy way is to give away prizes to the top 3 apps built at the hackathon. The reason why people actually coded at the iOS hackathon were the prizes (I attended). Obviously submissions built prior to the hackathon would be disqualified so this prevents people from building it, then attending.

There's still lots of socialization, but I believe hackathons should be centered around code, otherwise you might as well just call it a foursquare mixer. There were lots of really cool apps built at the iOS hackathon -- I'm really glad it was so hacker-centric, however the prizes were significant. Paypal gave away 3 iPads to winners that night.

Also, if the goal is to get people learning about the foursquare API -- the only way people will learn is by practicing. I learned a lot from others at the iOS hackathon -- even stuff I thought I already knew well. I think foursquare would get a lot more mileage if they just added a few small prizes to fuel competition.

Some of my friends are marathon runners -- they say that if the city sponsoring the running event offers no prizes, almost no professional runners will show up, but if the city offered a $100 small prize, there will be a significant amount of pro athletes attending. Does foursquare want pro hackers attending, or do they just want scavengers who are attending for the free food?

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?

#32

Post by dons » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 12:54 AM UTC

dwc wrote: post #29

dons wrote: post #11

The Haskell ones tend to produce a lot of code: but we plan ahead on what to work on, and turn up with small teams. More info on how we do planning: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hackathon

Did you ever attend an OpenBSD hackathon? I'm just curious.

No, was a bit hard to make it to .ca from .au. However, they did inspire the structure of the Haskell ones.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?

#33

Post by mkramlich » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 12:56 AM UTC

solution: start your own event. call it Actual Hackathon (TM)

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?

#34

Post by robryan » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 12:58 AM UTC

dons wrote: post #11

The Haskell ones tend to produce a lot of code: but we plan ahead on what to work on, and turn up with small teams. More info on how we do planning: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hackathon

I guess it has a bit to do with the different focuses, at the foursquare event your likely to get people who are trying to grow a business, so networking will be a primary goal of theres and it is advantageous to them to show something more polished to get some attention for the project.

A quick look at the Haskell page shows you guys are more focused on the language and supporting libraries themselves, which I assume most people are doing it out of love for the language and programming rather than any commercial gain.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?

#35

Post by stretchwithme » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 12:59 AM UTC

Maybe competitive events get more people coding?

I went to the first SF startup weekend where 40 people tried to implement a single idea. A democratically selected idea which was the first choice of very few people.

They have since switched to competing self-selected teams and much better ideas and implementations resulted.

See? Distributed decision making works better for many things.

Anyway, my point, besides the blatantly political one, is attend events where the structure and rules are conducive to what you want to do. And if the rules aren't published in advance, call and find out. And don't be afraid to leave if you think you're time will be wasted.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?

#36

Post by robryan » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 1:00 AM UTC

nyellin wrote: post #2

I recently attended a NightOwls meetup in Tel Aviv and had the same reaction. I still plan on attending events like this, because: 1. I can program at home any night. 2. Hackathons allow collaborating in person with other hackers. This is much more valuable to me than pure programming. 3. Hackathons are perfect places to find co-founders and developers, because they mix of programming and networking. I can demo apps…

The night owls concept is generally a fairly short event to, so most people don't come expecting to get to much done rather to work in a bit more relaxed environment and interact with other like minded people. (In the Melbourne version anyway).

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?

#37

Post by EGreg » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 1:03 AM UTC

I did. The only hackathon I ever did was a TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon last year. I stayed up all night, and made a real-time, semantic question-and-answer site where you could invite your friends via instant message.

It didn't win. Some robot that stabbed imaginary people in the air won.

It looked like most people there used existing software and just added something onto it. If I knew that, I would have come and added something to YouMixer.com ... I think I would have won :)

Update: I just went there and it looks like it somehow took off in spain!

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?

#38

Post by dons » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 1:05 AM UTC

robryan wrote: post #34

dons wrote: post #11

The Haskell ones tend to produce a lot of code: but we plan ahead on what to work on, and turn up with small teams. More info on how we do planning: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hackathon

I guess it has a bit to do with the different focuses, at the foursquare event your likely to get people who are trying to grow a business, so networking will be a primary goal of theres and it is advantageous to them to show something more polished to get some attention for the project. A quick look at the Haskell page shows you guys are more focused on the language and supporting libraries themselves, which I assum…

The focus is primarily about building open source infrastructure, so yep, for the love of code (though often informed by commercial need).

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?

#39

Post by timjulien » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 1:07 AM UTC

frankdenbow wrote: post #23

timjulien wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Send a message to my github account when we do the next foursquare hackathon and I'll do my best to get you in ( https://github.com/tjulien ). We maxed out the number of attendees based on how many people the space could hold. There was no criteria of having used our api before.

Will do. It was more packed than last week?

About the same number of people as at music hack day, I guess

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?

#40

Post by smallegan » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 1:07 AM UTC

I think you'll find that many gatherings are like this. Tech Conferences in particular seem to fall into this category where half of the people are there to network and the other half are there for the meat and potatoes content of the conference.