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Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

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Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#41

Post by dropit_sphere »

r0naa wrote: post #36
ForHackernews wrote: post #34

Honestly, I think part of this is because the word(s) "hack"/"hacker" have gotten really played out. At one time, 'hacker' had pretty specific[0], if not always easily-defined meanings. You might not be able to articulate what makes a great hack (quick: what do phone phreaking and putting a cop car on the MIT dome have in common?), but you knew it when you saw it. Nowadays, "hacker" has cultural cachet so we get life…

This is funny because whenever I get into an argument on HH about the "true" meaning of the term hacker I end-up posting this link to catb. It usually ends up with me being called a nostalgic conservative. tl;dr: Apparently I am 19 years old nostalgic.

If you adhere to a tradition, you get to borrow its age :)

http://xkcd.com/297/

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#42

Post by realrocker »

Hackathon is a side-effect of a wider change in modern software development. We seem to have successfully commoditized a portion of it. This portion called "apps" is mostly a cosmetic rearrangement of underlying components. Flush funding and the apparent status such work provides is hard to ignore. I mean how am I supposed to say no to a 10k prize money for 10-12 hours of work?

Whenever a product is commoditised, the brushes hide and the hammers come out. Imagine how the elite calligraphers of the 15th century felt when their beautiful noble art form was replaced by a block of wood. And the disgust they would have felt of seeing books in the hands of common folk instead of the Kings. IMO I think it's alright since we are not sure yet whether the hammers cannot change the world. They yet might.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#43

Post by geofft »

Take a look at the free software community (which is incidentally very well-correlated with what the "hacker" community used to be 20-30 years ago, and has much more of a claim to being the intellectual heirs of that group than the hackathon crowd does or even the HN crowd does). There's a lot of focus on ethics and civil liberties, and maybe a bit too little focus on effective PR and on shipping, but it's very refreshing.

As a concrete suggestion, LibrePlanet https://libreplanet.org/2015/ is next weekend at MIT, and free for students. Or see if there's a Debian group in your local area.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#44

Post by jmcohen »

Penn's hackathon is by application only. I think this is pretty silly. Here's a quote from a Medium post by one of the event organizers announcing this year's low acceptance rate of 30% [1]:

  The people that got in had almost all either won major hackathons before or 
  worked on multiple projects that each blew our socks off in a spectacular fashion.
I'm just trying to imagine these kids at Penn sitting around a table deliberating which applicants have the most "major" hackathon victories and most "blew our socks off" projects:

Organizer #1: This team looks promising. They placed second at the State U hackathon last spring!

#2: That's not impressive. Everyone knows that StateUHacks is a third-tier hackathon. A monkey with a rotary phone could win the Twilio prize there. Who do you think we are, Cornell? This is UPenn; we accept elite hackers only. Only the cream of the crop from HackMIT is good enough to don Dropbox t-shirts with us.

#1: Ok, how about this girl? The side project she submitted under the "Supplemental Materials" section of our application looks pretty good.

#2: As IF! I'd give that side project a 4/10. No infinite scrolling? What a waste of my time. And look at that .ly TLD. It's like, "HELLO, 2012 is calling and asking for its domain name back," am I right?

[1] https://medium.com/pennapps-x/pennapps-x-application-stats-6...

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#45

Post by smtddr »

Your rant is perfectly founded. There is absolutely an issue in the current tech-scene of people with super-sized egos and the ability to justify nearly anything if it means their start-up idea will succeed. Most of these attitudes change with age, but some won't simply because they'll never encounter any real consequences or talk with people outside their social-circle. You're running into a high-concentration because, I assume, you have a lot of young inexperienced people at your hackathons. Already tech-scene in general has this issue; it's higher with the young who tend to be inexperienced; then you're at a hackathon where it has a high chance of attracting the extra-intense of those types of people. It's even extra x 2 if the person comes from a well-off family. So their parents are wealthy, probably the parents friends and their kids are all well-off, go to a fancy school walk right off campus into fluffy VC-funded paradise without knowing anything of the world outside of wealth & tech. Anyone would have a difficult time developing empathy in that situation.

You may or may not be religious, but this quote comes to mind: "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" --Matthew 16:26

Best thing, imho, is don't let them change you. Stay compassionate and have empathy towards others; especially those outside of tech. Don't let your ego inflate to the point where you start saying things like "We create value! Everyone else should be praising us!" When you start to feel troubled by it walk away from tech. Have a walk in a nice park or something. Next time a homeless person asks for money, give a larger amount and perhaps try to strike up a conversation to hear their story. If you can, even volunteer at a homeless shelter. Definitely avoid trying to apply computer-world-boolean-logic to humans. Listen to people and appreciate emotions; don't consider emotions an inefficient distraction. Emotions is what makes us human and keeping in touch with them helps you understand others. Embrace your emotions and allow your heart to move you instead of your programmer-mind from time to time. Try a dancing lesson or 2. Maybe even read some romance novels. Remember the cashier that sold you that cup of coffee this morning is just as important as you are. Basically, don't lose your humanity in this goldrush.

There's more to life than social apps & VC-funding.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#46

Post by r0naa »

wiseleo wrote: post #28

Reasons why I go: 1. Get introduced to new technologies 2. Get inspired to build something new 3. Meet interesting people and help them debug code 4. Win prizes The immovable deadline is an amazing motivator for me. I recently finished some code at 12:59:28. The deadline was at 1:00pm. At 32 seconds on the clock, my code finally stopped returning errors. Technical hacks are not ignored by everyone. They are, however,…

> They are, however, often poorly presented. I got tired of that problem, so I am working on making it easier to get better exposure during hackathon presentations even if the presenter is not amazing at pitching.

I think that hackathons should revamp this process. If the goal is truly to build something amazing then judging people on 2 minutes pitch does not make sense. Maybe let a couple days to a team of judge to go through the project/code etc...? Just a random thought.

> They often continue to work with interesting people after the event is over even when they are not winners.

I second that, I got several interviews that way.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#47

Post by richardjordan »

You aren't wrong. I've been going to hackathons for many years and there's been a steady increase in folks who are going "to win" rather than folks going for the fun, the energy, the comradeship. Meeting other smart folks, sharpening your skills and having fun were always the big drivers for me and everyone I used to meet at them. I think GroupMe was a turning point. Big win, lots of $$, and that attracted a different kind of person unfortunately.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#48

Post by sudeepj »

There is nothing inherently wrong with hackathons. Software development is one of few disciplines in which one can cook-up something valuable quickly in few hours. Imagine medical students trying out this in their discipline :)

However, there is somehow perception that creating via hacking == great engineering. Hacking is a part of engineering. Engineering requires discipline, attention to detail, due diligence and long term view. Think about all the amazing bridges, or design of fighter aircrafts. Sure there might be moments where something was solved with clever hacks in these endeavours, but its the rigor of engineering that makes the product final shape.

There is also non-technical aspect. Great hacker may not be == great team person. All the amazing things around us were created by "teams".

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#49

Post by richardjordan »

jedanbik wrote: post #5

Honestly? You're hanging out with a bunch of ambitious, entry level devs, probably all college students. This is what you should expect from a crowd like this. Take what you need and leave the rest. For more depth and maturity, go to your favorite language meetups and attend/participate in talks from/with folks with some industry experience under their belt. Kudos for having perspective enough to ask for feedback abo…

I think a key part of the question though is the fact that it didn't used to be just entry level devs and college students at hackathons.

Re: Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

#50

Post by richardjordan »

jmcohen wrote: post #44

Penn's hackathon is by application only. I think this is pretty silly. Here's a quote from a Medium post by one of the event organizers announcing this year's low acceptance rate of 30% [1]: The people that got in had almost all either won major hackathons before or worked on multiple projects that each blew our socks off in a spectacular fashion. I'm just trying to imagine these kids at Penn sitting around a table d…

yeah the selective hackathon is a relatively new thing and kinda stupid - like hackathon organizers have some magic formula for picking winners... dumb idea
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