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RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon

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Re: RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon

#51

Post by fluffybucktsnek »

smaudet wrote: post #34
deadbabe wrote: post #24

On the contrary, I think software hackathons could really hit a golden age where we see how far people can push the limits of what we ever thought possible within 24 hours or a weekend through the use of AI. Less “pretty UI with mock data” and more fully working products ready for the consumer market.

I don't think you understand the goal of a hackathon. They aren't (or weren't) VC pitch sessions. You don't run marathons to be usane bolt, you don't go to hackathons to land VC deals. 24 hours of non stop AI usage doesn't sound fun. It sounds hateful and demotivating, you want to discover yourself , and maybe some other people, not what a robot can do.

I think it's you who has a very narrow vision of what a hackathon can be. Hackathons can both be about developing your programming skills or coming up with, then presenting new and interesting ideas.

In a sense, the latter is kind of about "landing VC deals", but replace VC with possibly a different audience.

I think this narrowness of mindset is more notable in the last paragraph: "...you want to discover yourself, and maybe some other people, not what a robot can do." In my perspective, what I think OP is saying, and I can personally see, is not about what a robot can do (at least no more than when experimenting with a different language/framework/library/etc.), but how far can you shape and accomplish your idea into reality using AI.

Re: RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon

#52

Post by s4i »

smaudet wrote: post #34
deadbabe wrote: post #24

On the contrary, I think software hackathons could really hit a golden age where we see how far people can push the limits of what we ever thought possible within 24 hours or a weekend through the use of AI. Less “pretty UI with mock data” and more fully working products ready for the consumer market.

I don't think you understand the goal of a hackathon. They aren't (or weren't) VC pitch sessions. You don't run marathons to be usane bolt, you don't go to hackathons to land VC deals. 24 hours of non stop AI usage doesn't sound fun. It sounds hateful and demotivating, you want to discover yourself , and maybe some other people, not what a robot can do.

I've found most hackathons not personally fulfilling because you can only get small stuff done and finalize maybe a happy path or two, accompanied by some rushed slides, before you run out of time. The AI really changes this and you can actually deeply exhaust an idea.

Re: RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon

#53

Post by odo1242 »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #44
le-mark wrote: post #14

Hackathons turned into “nice ui with mock data”-athons. Whoever got the best ui person on their team won. I benefitted from this a few times!

When did this happen? I remember judges at hackathons used to be very forgiving about lackluster UIs as long as the idea was cool and at least functional by the presentation time

It depends a lot on the hackathon/what the judges are looking for. A few are run by technical people who pick the coolest technical architectures, a few are run by casual users who pick the best looking result.

The majority of the ones I’ve been in have tended to be run by people who judge based on their notion of how useful the app will be societally, with the tie breaking factor being the UI/architectural design.

Re: RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon

#54

Post by fluffybucktsnek »

kusokurae wrote: post #39
smaudet wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand the goal of a hackathon. They aren't (or weren't) VC pitch sessions. You don't run marathons to be usane bolt, you don't go to hackathons to land VC deals. 24 hours of non stop AI usage doesn't sound fun. It sounds hateful and demotivating, you want to discover yourself , and maybe some other people, not what a robot can do.

The problem is my friend you're right but people who tend to browse this website are no longer engineers who would also understand this; it's mostly HR, Managerial staff, and jaded engineers who never enjoyed implementation details, and who are presently trying to convince everyone else implementation details are no longer of relevance.

I see this being thrown sometimes, but, honestly, it feels like a "HN is becoming reddit" situation. Would be interesting to see a study or a review of recent comments to confirm if that's really true.

Re: RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon

#55

Post by s4i »

NothingAboutAny wrote: post #16
al_borland wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone was bragging to me about their new AI startup a few months ago. I went to look at their website. It was some AI slop. I checked out the code for their form to register interest for the launch… it wasn’t setup at all. It was just a form that went nowhere. They had an idea, told AI to make a site about it, didn’t bother replacing the boilerplate to make it work, hosted it, and then started bragging to their fri…

there's an Ice cream shop in my city that has obviously generated all their signage and menus and everything else, even on their website the photos section has AI generated people smiling and happy next to the sign. I get that it's a small business that has probably saved a couple of G's on design/code but it's all so sloppy and obvious.

This validates my prediction that GenAI will be the Comic Sans of the late 2020s.

Re: RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon

#57

Post by deadbabe »

smaudet wrote: post #34
deadbabe wrote: post #24

On the contrary, I think software hackathons could really hit a golden age where we see how far people can push the limits of what we ever thought possible within 24 hours or a weekend through the use of AI. Less “pretty UI with mock data” and more fully working products ready for the consumer market.

I don't think you understand the goal of a hackathon. They aren't (or weren't) VC pitch sessions. You don't run marathons to be usane bolt, you don't go to hackathons to land VC deals. 24 hours of non stop AI usage doesn't sound fun. It sounds hateful and demotivating, you want to discover yourself , and maybe some other people, not what a robot can do.

In the end you will just be doing stuff with a robot anyway.

Re: RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon

#58

Post by bigstrat2003 »

pdntspa wrote: post #26
d1sxeyes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is participation in your off time mandatory? If so, the problem is not hackathons. If not, why not just… not participate? The folks who do often enjoy working on the problems, networking, etc., so I’m not sure killing them all together is particularly fair to folks who do get a lot out of them.

The lack of participation is often one of those things that management will quietly hold against you.

The problem in that case is working for a toxic employer, not the hackathon. You need to fix that regardless.

Re: RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon

#59

Post by zem »

as someone who got into linux and open source in the early 90s I will never stop being sad that "hackathon" morphed into a competitive activity, rather than "let's all get together and build some free software collaboratively". I guess the latter tends to get called a "dev sprint" these days, but it's always the first thing I think of when I hear "hackathon"

Re: RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon

#60

Post by komali2 »

zem wrote: post #59

as someone who got into linux and open source in the early 90s I will never stop being sad that "hackathon" morphed into a competitive activity, rather than "let's all get together and build some free software collaboratively". I guess the latter tends to get called a "dev sprint" these days, but it's always the first thing I think of when I hear "hackathon"

> "let's all get together and build some free software collaboratively".

G0v hackathons in Taiwan are still this, at the end everyone presents what they worked on and there's no judging or anything. Some of the projects have been going for years.

There was a hackathon two weeks ago, you can see all the videos from all the demos here https://m.youtube.com/@g0vTW

They happen every two months. Some people have started g0v chapters abroad, maybe you could consider it for your region!

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