Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

I'm a CS freshman at UMD who's been getting into the hackathon scene in the past months (been to 3, am somewhat involved with the HH facebook groups). I've been involved with the software community for about 5 years though, and programmed for 7.

> It bothers me to see how obsessed with success this generation of "hackers" seems to be.

Yeah, there's a lot of people who want to get rich by making a startup, and recently there was a poll that showed that the majority of people in the Facebook group want to go into management in their mid to late career. We're in the middle of a tech bubble and I think this is a symptom of it. Over the past decade or two, working with computers has become "cooler" as a part of "geek culture". People have seen a lot of people get outrageously rich with tech startups. And people are realizing that software is a high-paying field with a lower barrier to entry than most similar occupations. It's attracted a lot of people who just want money where previously there were people who were truly passionate. Or maybe it was always like that, I can't know.

> I have met people who were justifying censorship, population control and unfair business practices because they could benefit from them someday. I was expecting a little more regard to civil liberties and ethics from students and so called "hackers".

I haven't noticed that there's more people with this attitude within the hackathon community than outside it. Maybe a bit of unfair business practices, but the cases I saw seemed to be the result of not realizing that a practice was unfair. (Not counting the joke ideas that get thrown around all the time of course)

> People win by making "cool" apps (Uber for X) whereas technical hacks are totally ignored

It's a sad truth that simple CRUD apps are over-rewarded at hackathons. Interesting technical hacks aren't "totally ignored" though. It's just that it's harder to judge how long it will take to make something interesting, so either the result ends up being unfinished, or too unambitious, and it fails to capture the attention of judges.

It's also important to note that making a CRUD app that doesn't need to scale is easier than making an actually interesting piece of software. Some people aren't/think they aren't skilled enough to make anything else (yet).

> "There is such ignorance in this world about who we are. We are not criminals. We are innovators. We create things. We change the world.[...]"

While this does display narcissism, I think you're misinterpreting "we are not criminals". I think in context this person is saying that "hacking" in the context of hackathons is not what movie hackers do, breaking into networks and stealing sensitive information.

> Students who believe to be 1000x SE because they can stick two APIs together and use bootstrap end-up to be very condescending older engineers.

Yeah, this is a thing. I think it's a part of getting good at something for some people. I was certainly like this at around age 14 when I started being able to make software that could be useful. Suddenly I thought I was some sort of genius and looked down upon a lot of other people. I grew out of it, partly by not being 14 anymore, and partly by being exposed to the wealth of things I didn't know about.

> Hackathons are great to try out new technologies, meet new people and outreach to demographics that are traditionally under-represented in CS but I don't like where this is headed.

Show up to hackathons, make something technically interesting, and tell other people about it. People are intrigued by those willing to step outside the normal realm of hackathon projects. I do this. I have some friends who do this. If enough people go in with this attitude, eventually the culture will change.

> Like HS there is "cool kids" who are "Student Entrepreneur" or "Innovator, UX Artist blah blah", "RoR Genius" etc... and the rest of the world.

There's not many people who behave like this, but the people who do are pretty obnoxious. There are a lot of people who associate with them but are actually pretty down-to-earth and cool.

Some people are genuinely passionate about computing and for them it will always be more than just what they do to feed themselves. There's nothing wrong with this, and nothing wrong with the alternative, so long as you're effective, happy, and don't delude yourself.

First off, the sentence of "the people who were justifying censorship, population control and unfair business practices because they could benefit from them someday" echoed back the news I remember from 2012 or so which was like "In America, half of the lowest earners are opposed to raising taxes on the rich, because they reckon they will someday get rich and raising rich taxes would mean their children would be deprived of having the possibility of getting rich someday" (If someone could find the link of that news I'd be grateful)

As for the hackers, let's see the distinction between the "hacker" and the "problem solver" Richard Stallman did not only hacked software, he solved the problem of software being unaccessable to everyone. Rich Hickey did not only hacked software, he solved the problem of Lisp being unaccessable to newer generations and platforms. The founders of YCombinator didn't only hacked software they solved the problem of eCommerce.

I actually love the people who stick two APIs together and use bootstrap end-ups to show something interesting because they at least 'do' something. But the problem solvers are always the superior ones and I eventually spend more time following them because I myself have to solve problems in my life :)

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, 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 helped many presenters improve their pitches in only a few minutes, but it's a difficult skill.

Sponsors don't ignore cool technical hacks. For them, such events are partially a recruitment opportunity. They often continue to work with interesting people after the event is over even when they are not winners.

Although I won several hackathons, more importantly I got started working on my products at such events. They were a catalyst for me to stop dreaming and start building.

Don't worry; good technical chops will never go out of style.