41–50 of 140 posts
I have always thought of these as networking events for early career/junior SWEs. It’s almost never about “building something” but rather learning and connecting with people of various skillsets. "Winning" doesn’t matter, it’s the equivalent of a participation trophy in the real world.
Recently on HN: "The Gang Has A Mid-Life Crisis" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43860696 Hackathons are fun and productive when what you need to do/learn — something you haven't already done/learned — can be done/learned in a weekend. Once you graduate, there's a lot fewer of those things lying around. Quote: > We need look no further than the "hackathon," that sad facsimile of the days when we were all learnin…
I've found that the group really makes the experience, and find them less fun for the tech and more fun for learning about the people through the work and a team project without the constraints of a corporation.
And generally, it's not just people who aren't tied up in this that will participate, but people who will make time to do something exciting and form an interesting connection.
I’m not really sure they ever made much sense. Going back 15-20 years ago, they were always poorly executed and was not for the devs. The only exception was one I went to put on by Atlassian a long time ago which was a hardcore geek-vs-geek live coding night with lots of drinking and real prizes. This was before they went public and didn’t care about offending.
Recently on HN: "The Gang Has A Mid-Life Crisis" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43860696 Hackathons are fun and productive when what you need to do/learn — something you haven't already done/learned — can be done/learned in a weekend. Once you graduate, there's a lot fewer of those things lying around. Quote: > We need look no further than the "hackathon," that sad facsimile of the days when we were all learnin…
Game jams (similar to hackathons) are great for applying what you already know but with a new group of people. They're much harder if you _dont_ know what your doing (contrary to what you suggest). I've found that the group really makes the experience, and find them less fun for the tech and more fun for learning about the people through the work and a team project without the constraints of a corporation. And genera…
Regular software projects can also be creative, but almost all software is pure CRUD at the heart.
The next issue is the required time for the MVP. For a game, you can validate the base game loop quiet quickly. It's a lot harder to validate wherever regular software is actually viable, because you usually need to basically finish it entirely before the UX can really be validated if a mock-up doesn't suffice
When I was salaried, I never participated in company-sponsored hackathons and actively resisted attending any conferences or anything of the sort. Even back in late 00's / early 2010's it all felt like sponsorship hell, and my point of reference for the activities was nigh-impossible to recreate.. When I was a teenager in the mid-90's, I would go to a monthly Boy Scouts Explorer Post group hosted/sponsored by CompuSe…
"hackathons" were lame once they got a name. They became lame because it wasn't exploring what interested you, pushing frontiers but had a define goal that wasn't yours. You have to fit into someone else's plan for the "hackathon", and what the outcomes would be.
How on earth is there anything "hackerish" if you're diligently fitting into someone else's plan? Lame.