Hackathons are nonsense • Hacker News Board

Re: Hackathons are nonsense

#71

Post by davewiner » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 10:08 PM UTC

cdixon wrote: post #67

davewiner wrote: post #65

Let me ask you guys a questions, the people who say that Hackathons are great. Why 24 hours? I find that I need to clear my mind after four or five hours of technical work. If I do that, I get a lot more done. And my projects come in 4-5 hour chunks of code writing and debugging and everything else that goes into the development process. A bit, but actually very little, requires or even benefits from face to face tal…

I like the idea of getting together to demo stuff you are working on more than hackathons.

I think that's what most hackathons actually are. :-)

Re: Hackathons are nonsense

#72

Post by plamere » Tue, Feb 21, 2012, 1:23 AM UTC

davewiner wrote: post #65

Let me ask you guys a questions, the people who say that Hackathons are great. Why 24 hours? I find that I need to clear my mind after four or five hours of technical work. If I do that, I get a lot more done. And my projects come in 4-5 hour chunks of code writing and debugging and everything else that goes into the development process. A bit, but actually very little, requires or even benefits from face to face tal…

Dave - I like hackathons. In particular I like the 24 hour constraint. Having to build something in 24 hours (really probably 18 hours), forces me to make decisions, to get to the heart of the problem. Similarly, building something that I know I will only have 2 minutes to demo makes me really focus on what is important. I think the constraints lead to more creativity, just like the Haiku with 17 verses and 3 lines opens the door for whole libraries of verse.

Some more of my thoughts on hackathons here:

http://musicmachinery.com/2012/02/20/hackathons-are-not-nons...

Re: Hackathons are nonsense

#73

Post by crymer11 » Tue, Feb 21, 2012, 5:17 PM UTC

caseysoftware wrote: post #6

While some people think "building the software" is the goal, I don't think it is. In my opinion, the real underlying goal is to get people out of their normal environment for a day or weekend, make everyone think differently, prioritize everything, and build connections within the local community. There are very few non-purely-social events that cross programming languages, tech communities, and geographies. Hackatho…

Exactly. I landed my current job solely through relationships created during a recent local hackathon and the exposure it afforded me.