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Hackathons are bad for you

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Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#41

Post by megablast »

DigitalSea wrote: post #30

Hackathons to me have almost been about pushing developers to the limits within a 24/36 hour time frame for free, an excuse used by companies to exploit the "hacker" gimmick and keep most of the IP afterwards. Give them some beer, some pizza and energy drinks and make them stare at a screen all night. I often code at night, but I would never code 24 hours straight, let alone 36 hours. I only ever entered one hackatho…

> and keep most of the IP afterwards

I have never been to a hackathon where anyone else got to keep the IP, and I have been to about 30.

I am not sure what pressure you are talking about, I always found them great fun.

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#44

Post by neurotech1 »

trafficlight wrote: post #17
jrockway wrote: post #15

Caffeine isn't a diuretic if you use it regularly. From Wikipedia: "Regular users of caffeine have been shown to develop a strong tolerance to the diuretic effect, and studies have generally failed to support the notion that ordinary consumption of caffeinated beverages contributes significantly to dehydration, even in athletes."

As a consumer of copious amounts of caffeinated beverages, I have anecdotal evidence to back this up.

As someone who has consumed copious * 10 amounts of caffeine, I would disagree. The tolerance to the diuretic effect isn't that much. What some people refer to as "tolerance" is more the effect of dehydration. Of course, drinking large quantities of water to balance the large quantities of caffeinated beverages isn't a brilliant idea either..

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#46

Post by adamsaleh »

I have never experienced a hackathon, most similar thing that comes to my mind, that I was part of are hackfests on some open-source conferences and those were pretty great.

Usualy a hackfest meant bunch of coders interested in a project sitting in a room for ~5 hours and doing bug fixing, new features, or just discussing. Everything is good in moderation, I guess.

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#47

Post by scottporad »

kevinconroy wrote: post #4

Hackathons run by companies have always seemed to me to be a way for them to unleash creative thinking without having to devote significant company time to it or make strategic tradeoffs. The best companies find a way to build the spirit of hackathons into the daily culture and provide scheduled, dedicated time to do this during normal business hours. That being said, if you're young and have no kids then hackathons…

"Hackathons run by companies have always seemed to me to be a way for them to unleash creative thinking without having to devote significant company time to it or make strategic tradeoffs."

Yes. The internal hackathons I've been involved with have taught me a lot about a) problems developers face that they're motivated to fix, and b) areas developers are personally interested in and motivated to put forth some effort. (I suppose those are sort of the same thing, although what I meant by the first was fixing problems, and the second was introducing new features or products.)

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#48

Post by nthnb »

Hackathons are just a formalization of what we already do when we're building something we care about. Everyone should take care of themselves but if you care deeply about something and want to change the world, hacking all night once in a while can be invigorating.

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#49

Post by benatkin »

megablast wrote: post #41
DigitalSea wrote: post #30

Hackathons to me have almost been about pushing developers to the limits within a 24/36 hour time frame for free, an excuse used by companies to exploit the "hacker" gimmick and keep most of the IP afterwards. Give them some beer, some pizza and energy drinks and make them stare at a screen all night. I often code at night, but I would never code 24 hours straight, let alone 36 hours. I only ever entered one hackatho…

> and keep most of the IP afterwards I have never been to a hackathon where anyone else got to keep the IP, and I have been to about 30. I am not sure what pressure you are talking about, I always found them great fun.

Apparently internal company hackathons are a thing.

Re: Hackathons are bad for you

#50

Post by thisone »

benatkin wrote: post #49
megablast wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and keep most of the IP afterwards I have never been to a hackathon where anyone else got to keep the IP, and I have been to about 30. I am not sure what pressure you are talking about, I always found them great fun.

Apparently internal company hackathons are a thing.

I don't know how most places do them, but when something similar was suggested in my place, it was all weekend hack for the company's brand's benefit without us devs getting paid for it.

Yay Fun! (sigh)

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