The 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
Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
11–20 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#12They should probably just rename them something else.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#13as someone who regularly competes in hack days and has won a few, there is nothing more annoying than having someone come in for a few hours, add a new feature to an already developed product then enter the whole thing in as a hack, a lot of the time the Judges don't know and it just promotes the tactic to other people...
How would you enforce that only work done doing the hackathon is presented as the entry? Not trolling, genuinely curious and looking for suggestions.
Verify against a repository, simplest way, just require everyone to provide you access to their svn/git/whatever log.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#14I share your frustration. I think many of the trendier companies have a tendency for it to end up being networking and also about being seen at so-and-so's hackathon. It's a 'scene' for many ppl who wanna be 'hackers' but really are not.
My biggest pet-peeve at hackathons are those who turn up with full working hacks they did prior. Nothing wrong with that but please have the courtesy to not enter them into the competition against the poor smuck (like me) who only had the last 12 hours to pull their hack together.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#15[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#16The last one I was at my team built an interesting HTML 5 game with impactjs in under 24 hours (we sponsored the hackathon). There were a lot of cool projects built in the same time period. However, the biggest problem was non-workers who just wanted to chat with people who were actually working. It was very distracting and I bet many of the projects would have gotten further without the distractions.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#17I was at the same FourSquare hackathon today, and you're right -- there was a lot of socializing going on, and there were people who seemed to be trying to figure out how to present their previously-existing project or startup.
On the other hand, the New York hacker scene is anemic enough that we can use any chance to socialize and network that we get -- and there were people there actually coding things from scratch today, myself included.
I had to leave before the presentations, and haven't see most of the apps people have been working on, so I can't comment on the "overly polished" aspect of this... But in an ideal world, I would hope that people would be able to enjoy whichever aspects of the event were relevant to them, and not get sidetracked by the people who were on a different track.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#18I was wondering why they were being selective on the people who could come to this. I really wanted to come and learn more about their API but it seems as though they were picking people who already built on it. Isn't the point of these events to get new people into the ecosystem? To answer the question, yes people really do code and come up with solid apps at these events. Check out the music hackday apps that were…
As I understand it, there was some vague talk about being selective, in case they maxed out the capacity of the space, but in the end I believe they sent out tickets to everyone who signed up, and nobody was turned away.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#19Hey isqster,
I'm Jorge and I work as a software engineer at Foursquare. I'm sorry to hear that you're frustrated at our hackathon. Certainly some people are chatting and socializing, but that's only natural when you put a lot of people in the same room. From what I can tell though, the vast majority of people are actually building something today.
Some people have brought projects that they started before today, but I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. The hackathon wasn't meant as a sprint to see who can churn out the most code in a day, but rather a gathering of developers who are excited about the Foursquare API and what can be built on it. We want people to share ideas about what they're building and what's possible to build on top of our API, and yes, also to encourage people to build new stuff. (That said, not everyone has brought prior work to the hackathon! I know at least one team that has built several apps on top of our API in the past, and they've started a genuinely new project from scratch for the hackathon.)
If you feel the main room is too noisy, there's lots of side rooms at General Assembly which are a little quieter. You'll see teams in the side rooms making generous use of the white boards to design their app and plan out the necessary work for building it.
Again, I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated. If you have any suggestions on how we can make future hackathons more conducive to coding, feel free to ping me in meatspace. (I'm sitting against the big white wall by the water cooler. My name tag says "Jorge".)
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon?
#20I was wondering why they were being selective on the people who could come to this. I really wanted to come and learn more about their API but it seems as though they were picking people who already built on it. Isn't the point of these events to get new people into the ecosystem? To answer the question, yes people really do code and come up with solid apps at these events. Check out the music hackday apps that were…
Send a message to my github account when we do the next foursquare hackathon and I'll do my best to get you in (https://github.com/tjulien). We maxed out the number of attendees based on how many people the space could hold. There was no criteria of having used our api before.