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Hackathon Be Gone

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Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#61

Post by [deleted] »

hueving wrote: post #59
mdxn wrote: post #53

The hackathon that they mention in the post (Mhacks) put up an application process and enforced a 50/50 gender ratio. In the weeks leading up to the event, I overheard many defeated conversations from fellow CS students over anxiety of getting rejected from this hackathon because they were male. The females didn't share the same anxiety, but it definitely made them feel down that they wouldn't be able to participate…

That's the dumbest barrier I've heard in a long time to enter a hackathon. Your gender shouldn't prevent you from getting into an event to get work done, it should be based on the merit of what you want to do. Did anyone ask if their rejection would be reconsidered if they chopped their penis off?

[deleted]

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#62

Post by [deleted] »

alexashka wrote: post #26
nxzero wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is to get something done, force you to make choice, have a deadline, etc. -- not something else, like production ready code.

The older you get - the less patience you have for tight deadlines and 'forcing yourself to make a choice'. That's just having more energy than you know what to do with. The tragedy is young people have lots of energy and are scatterbrained and old people are sometimes wise but too tired. The future is having older wise folk write out proposals to ambitious projects, and have young people fill in the necessary parts.…

[deleted]

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#63

Post by matt_wulfeck »

Is it possible that the value derived from a hackathon depends largely on your age and nothing else? When I was 18 I loved this kind of stuff and would do it for fun, if nothing other to learn and make friends. Now you'd be hard pressed to get me there unless my team was people I know and worked with in the past. And it would be almost irresponsible to see parents there.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#64

Post by hueving »

The author says this:

>If this sounds like advocacy for mediocrity, instead of merit, it is not. Keep in mind the following facts

And then follows up with a bunch of excuses about how they are not measuring merit by any means because traditional presentations and different project timelines are to difficult to compare for merit.

"it sounds like we don't want reward merit, and that's because we don't have the competence to measure it"

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#66

Post by hueving »

ww520 wrote: post #58

The point on marketing is spot on. I've seen team won first prize solely based on Powerpoint.

They wrote PowerPoint? If so, that's impressive enough to win a hackathon IMO. Lots of people use PowerPoint every day.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#67

Post by ajdlinux »

sbierwagen wrote: post #34

In addition to all the provided stimulants, hackers are encouraged to work through the night. Sure there may be reminders that you should sleep when tired, but why a 24- hour event instead of a 12-hour one then? Shut off the power and wifi from 10 PM to 6 AM.

The one hackathon event that I regularly participate in (GovHack) generally closes down between 11pm and 7am or thereabouts.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#68

Post by stan_rogers »

alexashka wrote: post #26
nxzero wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is to get something done, force you to make choice, have a deadline, etc. -- not something else, like production ready code.

The older you get - the less patience you have for tight deadlines and 'forcing yourself to make a choice'. That's just having more energy than you know what to do with. The tragedy is young people have lots of energy and are scatterbrained and old people are sometimes wise but too tired. The future is having older wise folk write out proposals to ambitious projects, and have young people fill in the necessary parts.…

"It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired." - Robert A. Heinlein

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#69

Post by turkishrevenge »

mdxn wrote: post #53

The hackathon that they mention in the post (Mhacks) put up an application process and enforced a 50/50 gender ratio. In the weeks leading up to the event, I overheard many defeated conversations from fellow CS students over anxiety of getting rejected from this hackathon because they were male. The females didn't share the same anxiety, but it definitely made them feel down that they wouldn't be able to participate…

Just exploit the identity-political zeitgeist that's overtaken universities lately: claim yourself genderqueer, non-binary presenting as male. With the right incantation, the organizers will fold like a house of cards, lest they suffer the blowback to excluding a "righteous" participant.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#70

Post by jbarham »

kamens wrote: post #57

At Khan Academy we've been running ours as "Healthy Hackathons" — we kick people out at 11:45pm to get sleep, bring in healthy food, snacks, and activities, and always include our work week as part of the schedule (not just weekends). We actually just held our Monday-Friday Healthy Hack Week last week ( http://healthyhackathon.khanacademy.org ). One of my favorite weeks ever, particularly because we encourage "hacks"…

Actually what your so-called "Healthy Hackatons" demonstrates to me is that not a lot of Khan Academy employees are married with kids. I know my wife would be annoyed if I was goofing off at the office until midnight for a week leaving her to feed our kids and put them to bed by herself. But, hey, it's all for the greater good of "disrupting" education!

It's ironic that obviously very few Khan Academy employees have children of their own, but that's probably because it's only a few years since they were children themselves...

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