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Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture

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

#61
That's because the world is vast and there are many companies and engineers in it.

I see two types of engineers: the build-it-quick lot and the build-it-right lot.

The first is ideal for companies where getting an idea to market as fast and cheap as possible is ideal. They use abstraction tools which are not robust but allow fast and flexible prototyping and a "MVP" to come out in a month. The end goal is to get enough traction for an acquisition, the acquirer can worry about rebuilding things properly.

The second lot are greybeards, with or without grey or beards. They will tell managers annoying things like "I can't commit to this deadline because I don't know, right now, the order of magnitude of time this will take". They work for larger companies or more ambitious projects where correctness and robustness is valued, like in banks or designing embedded systems or machine vision companies. They also tend to cost more because their skillset is bid up by large companies with deep pockets.

Both sides have a point.

It's probably more important to push the MVP out today before you run out of money than to have a truly scalable, Boyce-Codd NF compliant database underlying it in just a few more months, if you're building a simple company in a busy space, and worrying about customer data protection when you have no customers is understandably not at the top of the priority list for your investors.

On the other hand, it's probably a bad idea to build your hospital life support system in RoR, or your multinational financial reporting infrastructure in 2 weeks of "hacking".

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

#62
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the notion of not raising taxes on the rich, that's coming up every now and again. From a 1976 musical, for example: "Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor." (Peter Stone)

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." — [likely not] John Steinbeck

Unfortunately, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed (but it came to my mind as well)

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

#63
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.

No? Most serious programmers are too busy programming to have time to blow on a hackathon.

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

#64
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." — [likely not] John Steinbeck

Unfortunately, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed (but it came to my mind as well)

Thank you!

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

#65
post #60

Regarding hackathons, I've felt much the same as you. I let many of my team members go to these events to keep them happy, motivated, and to network. I have met many people from these events, brought them in for interview, tried to find people to start a start-up with, and so on. Full disclosure - I've only gone to hackathons to accompany co-workers to provide advice and to network, I don't have any desire to actuall…

I would love to chat, feel free to shoot me a message: alt.r9-5p83se1@yopmail.com

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

#66
post #61

That's because the world is vast and there are many companies and engineers in it. I see two types of engineers: the build-it-quick lot and the build-it-right lot. The first is ideal for companies where getting an idea to market as fast and cheap as possible is ideal. They use abstraction tools which are not robust but allow fast and flexible prototyping and a "MVP" to come out in a month. The end goal is to get enou…

> I see two types of engineers: the build-it-quick lot and the build-it-right lot.

There are also those of us who try to be both, depending on the current business priorities.

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

#67
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…

Ironically does UPenn even have that highly regarded of a CS program? B-school sure, but CS? This really sounds like B-school bullshit.

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

#68
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…

To be fair, if you're criticising selective hackathon idea, you have to go all the way criticise the whole competitiveness of hackathons altogether. Because "selective hackathons" are just a logical continuation of the idea that hackathon can be won. Personally, I don't yet have a definite opinion on the whole matter, but you certainly can't be OK with one thing and be opposed to it's logical conclusion.

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No? Most serious programmers are too busy programming to have time to blow on a hackathon.

The early ones did have serious programmers at them.

My first memory of one is Yahoo using it to get people to use its API in London, about 10 years ago. That was when a web API with major data behind it was an important new thing. The openness was quite radical, and linked somewhat to the open source movement.

We (ScraperWiki, Rewired State...) did a bunch of hack days for mainly philanthropic purposes - democracy, journalism and so on. More recently DataKind does that even better.

Now though it has become so mainstream, there are hackdays everywhere. They're being driven even more by marketing, rather than coding. The original purpose feels lost.

There'll be something else next.

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

#70

We hired a dev that's very much like you described. We "knew" he was smart because he did well in some Hackathons. Had built some cool projects on his flashy portfolio. Went to the same university we want to, which is a top university in the world. Had good grades at said University. etc. He had all the markings of being a fantastic intern for us. About half way through his internship we had to fire him. He lacked th…

How did you evaluate the other person?
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