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Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
61–70 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#62I have a hard time actually hacking at such events, but I've seen great development work happen in a slightly different context -- I think the ideal format is a pair of events, separated by a week or two. At the first, you present some cool new technology (a new sensor, embedded platform, api, etc.). You show some examples of how it works. People get together and discuss, form teams, etc. Then, during the next week o…
ME TOO DAWG!
Sitting at an orange table in the middle of the upstairs room staring at a laptop with a black wool shirt, fingerless gloves and a faux-hawk. Find me.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#63Absolutely. Eventually you sink into the code and forget about the chatter and your shitty laptop keyboard and you can get a lot done. A few hours later, you can come out of it, get some beers, and go back to sitting at your desk for 12 hours a day.
Some software I've written at hackathons:
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#64Does anyone know if a hackathon has been held where there were active measures/rules/restrictions in place to ensure that all development was done within the period of the hackathon?
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually feel like your event (NYTimes Hackday in December) was pretty good along those lines; I didn't get the feeling that any of the applications had a significant amount of pre-writing code-wise.
Glad you enjoyed it. We should be doing it again this year too. There were a couple with projects that were written a week+ prior but we factored that into the conversation when giving out prizes.
Cool! I dunno if we'll be able to make it out again (we were the Night Scheduler guys), but I'll definitely see what I can do.
Really? There were a couple that I could see that being a possibility with (the Etsy/Flickr guys), but I didn't even consider them as contenders seeing as how they sponsored. shrug
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#66Were you at the NYTimes Open Hackday? My teammate and I flew in from Michigan (to be fair, I'm originally from the Tri-State area) to participate, and we damn well weren't just there for networking. That having been said, the networking is incredible. I participated in a Yahoo! Hack U event up here in the great white north, and landed a job this summer out of it (and an offer from Yahoo, which I wound up turning down…
I was also at the TimesOpen Hack day, and spent most of the day coding. There was a lot of chatter there, though (some of it contributed to what my app eventually became). Bring headphones for when you need to start building. Thankfully no one there presented deckware.
Were you one of the Trippy guys? Really liked your application. I was one of the two Night Scheduler developers.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#67Yes, I just got home from a code for america datacamp hackathon at socrata in seattle, was a lot of fun and quite productive.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#68I compete fairly by writing 100% of code at the event, but I also have a product that I wrote and implemented as an API. It is a powerful API similar in scope to what Tungle likely has (I don't have access to a competitor's API).
When I demo my hack, I de-emphasize the use of my API. In effect, I grab a couple of sponsor APIs, mix them with my own API, and create a product.
I talk with teams for a while and help them when I can. In the end I take 24 hours to simply code.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#69I've been to many hackathons both in the SF Bay area and in the Sydney area, and I find the Sydney ones to involve much more hacking. I think many people in the tech scene in the SF bay area are there because they want to get in on that scene, because it's the hot/$$ thing todo, but they don't actually have tech skills - so when they come to tech events, they either find a way to not hack, or they find someone to hol…
Maybe moving to Sydney is something I should look into, theres the occasional meetup (ruby, node communities (in a library :P)) but that's all there seems to be. Brisbane is rather dull in many ways.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#70The 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
Argh! It was last weekend at Hacker Dojo? I live downtown Mountain View, and learning Haskell is my pet project, how did I miss that?