The best piece of advice that no one ever seems to give about hackathons:<p>--<p>Hackathons may or may not be for you. Try it once. Don't stay the whole time if you don't want. If they aren't for you, don't go again. If they are, great, have an awesome time.<p>--<p>For some reason, they're touted as this end-all be-all social event that if you don't go to YOU ARE MISSING OUT AND YOU WILL NEVER RECOVER. As many people posted here, the situation's combination of adrenaline and seratonin depletion gets people into some pretty seriously fucked mental states that causes odd group dynamics. Some will thrive on this. Some hate it.<p>Case in point: I grew up in the rural midwest, but had computers. So computers are something I deal best with in situations with little to no people around. Hackathons are the opposite of that. Took me like, 2 attendances to realize that, and now I just avoid them. Hell, I even avoid career situations that put me in that environment, because I don't work well there.<p>Not to say I haven't pulled some insanely stupid hours in my time, but I still even did most of those alone, and I'll continue to do so.
All of these are valid criticisms, but in my mind a hackathon is a treat: pizza, soda and staying up all night is fun sometimes, regardless of whether you play Halo, watch movies, or write a cool app. I agree with a lot of the comments that say you can't get much done; it's mostly a case of connecting existing libraries and data sources to create a sort of 'mash-up'.<p>That said, being able to prototype quickly is an awesome skill, and it completely exercises different parts of my skillset than my normal job. Going from coding a large C application, to hacking together a Ruby app is a very refreshing experience. Maybe if you spend your whole day working on the same stack in the same domain, it's less fun.<p>Finally, it's a good way to get something you've had in mind done. If your whole life isn't made of crunches, the occasional high-stress, urgent deadline situation is (once again) a welcome change. For people who work under these conditions all the time, yeah, it's probably not fun.
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.<p>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.<p>That being said, if you're young and have no kids then hackathons are probably a lot of fun. After you have other commitments in life, it just doesn't work.
At my last job I worked at a YC startup where the entire codebase was written in the 3 months leading up to demo day when the team was under a lot of time pressure. Sure it worked fine as a demo, but with the pace of startup land this same code was then thrown into production and as the startup grew the codebase couldn't quite keep up. There weren't many catastrophic failures but there ended up being a lot of patching that had to happen on a daily basis. I would say 80% of my time was spent tracking down weird bugs in the code and trying to figure out what the hell the original authors were thinking when they designed things so poorly.<p>The point is, you probably will write really bad code if you are under a lot of time pressure. Hackathons seem like they are probably useful for some things like bouncing around ideas and quickly fleshing stuff out but please, for the love of god, if you decide to take your hackathon idea and run with it DELETE ALL OF YOUR CODE. Just do it. Then take some time and think through your overall design because trying to make major modifications when there are paying customers relying on your site every day really sucks.
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.<p>I only ever entered one hackathon and it wasn't as great as some would tell you. The peer pressure you feel to keep going even when you feel like you're going to pass out from exhaustion is immense. Not a great feeling and I wouldn't recommend it, the fun part is overrated.
Part of the confusion here is that, I think, people treat different kind of hackatons differently. I took part in 48-hour coding contests long before they were even called 'hackatons' (back then we called them Jams). Those are some of the best coding experiences in my life. Working in small teams on something fun and creative with tight deadline was absolutely exhilarating and reinvigorating. But there's one caveat.<p>We did this <i>by ourselves, for ourselves</i>. For fun.<p>What I personally strongly dislike are the 'company hackatons', in which developers from a company are basically tricked to do some unpaid work for the company. In my opinion, it's dishonest. You can feel the difference in the air - events that are created by the dev community for themselves to play and improve just <i>smell different</i> than the ones started by managers.<p>So for me, the problem with hackatons boils down to the problem of "fun" vs. "work". Things started as fun, but they seem to be turning more and more into work. Just like in case of SEO and the Web, it's all great until someone from outside comes who wants to profit on this, and this is why we can't have nice things.
We had an internal hackathon at work two weeks ago. I'm really new to the industry and this was my first one and I gotta say I agree with this guy on all counts.<p>It seems to mesh well with another part of the developers lifestyle though: a severe lack of free time.<p>"But in the end, I really feel that Hackathons are beneficial less as a place and time to code out your next big idea, but more of a time to mingle and bond with the community. It’s like a gathering of the tribe. And personally, there is more value in that than actually developing anything."<p>Perhaps in the future I will focus on hackathon projects that are technically unstressful and allow me real time to bond and discuss with the community.
I'll say this up front... I love hackathons (and similar events: ICFP programming contest). I have fun hanging out with a bunch of like minded people, and I find that I learn a ton when I force myself to sit down and actually make something. I can certainly see the points about food/drink, however, the events I've been to (and hosted a bit of) did have healthy options. I think there would be a mass lynching if there weren't unhealthy options too, but ah well, caveat emptor.<p>However! I actually don't think that occasional hackathons (everything in moderation) is harmful to hacker culture. People do not model their lives around hackathons. As a participant, I can tell you that I do not want to feel that crappy on a regular basis under any circumstances. Rather, hackathons are a reflection of a culture that already exists. Fix the culture, not the results, because I'm sure that lack of good sleep, diet, and exercise are far more pervasive and prevelant problems outside of hackathons.
I think the dysfunctional approach to "hackathons" described here leads to a lot of people just not participating. Maybe it's a stereotype, but for myself and other women I know, the idea of not getting enough sleep and eating crappy food while working for hours and hours isn't very appealing at all.<p>An exception were the Food + Tech hackathons I went to when I lived in NYC. They took place during the day and there was a variety of good food to eat no matter what your food preferences were. I'd love to organize something like that in Chicago.<p>I did try to organize a gourmet hack night but it didn't go so well. I got duck confit on my keyboard.
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."
I remember the first time I heard the word "hackathon" was in the context of OpenBSD. The folks that worked on that were geographically distributed throughout the world, and approximately once per year they'd meet in a hotel in Canada and have their one chance to work collaboratively in person instead of over email. It sounded cool.<p>I don't remember when I first heard the Bay Area usage of the word "hackathon", but it sounded decidedly less cool.
Large-scale Hackathons are the best thing that's ever happened. I've learned new languages/frameworks, tools, platforms, and even learned nearly everything I know about programming at hackathons.<p>Its hard to find a better environment for learning than one in which you are building something you are passionate about and overcoming obstacles like nobodys business with a hard external deadline and plenty of incentive without having to even worry about getting food/drinks/anything at all.
> Working late into the night and not sleeping for days is lauded and almost considered a necessity by many these days.<p>> And leaving long-term health out of the equation, lack of sleep hasn’t been known to improve your focus or the ability to be logical or creative, all of which are critical skills for developers.<p>For me personally, I code late at night because it's the only time during the day when I can truly be distraction-free. No incoming emails, no meetings, no phone calls, no running into people. Coding happens best when you can concentrate for long periods of time [1], and the best time to concentrate is when the rest of the world is asleep. YMMV.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/head.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/head.html</a>
If you're attending <i>every single hackathon ever</i>, you probably have problems that aren't purely physical.<p>If you aren't, then recognize that occasional deviations from an otherwise healthy schedule and lifestyle aren't lethal or actually bad.
Alcohol is bad for you. So is going outside and waking up every morning.<p>I enjoy doing these things in moderation though, do we need more nanny stating to tell me what I can enjoy doing?
may be related...?<p>I was part of the 'startup weekend' in raleigh last april. Our team came in 2nd out of 20 (actually, there was a 3 way tie for 2nd).<p>Most other teams had somewhere between 4 and 8 developers or related technical folks. Our team had 1 - me. I know other teams got mired in arguments about what version of Rails to use, which gems, and various other technical trivia, I had just me to answer to, and I got quite a lot done. Other teams got a lot done too, no doubt, but one person just hacking with some non-dev minds to bounce ideas off of was just as effective - perhaps moreso - than a team of developers.<p>At the halfway point we chatted with another team. I showed what we'd (I) had done, and one guy smirked some. He then showed their system - a mobile app that did XYZ, had some neat features, and was pretty far along. Someone on my team said "but we've only got one developer", and the guy changed his tune, and became visibly impressed in what I'd been able to build in... at that time, around 12 hours. They'd had a team of, I think, 6 devs.<p>The point is not that I'm some super coder, but that focused concentration and time blocks with a handful of people <i>can</i> get a lot done quickly.
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.<p>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.
I am totally lost by this post. I've attended several hackathons, but they're nothing like what's described. They tend to be 9-to-5 affairs stretched out over several days. The food at the last one had a lot of fruit, healthy sandwiches, plenty of water, juice, coffee, tea, (and yes, some junk food). We saved the boozing for dinner.<p>And the hackathons <i>weren't</i> a distraction. Yes, some people ran around and talked a lot and there was definitely socializing going on (if you're not a people person, a hackathon may not be for you), but really: a lot of the talk was with people who were experts in the problem area we were gathered to deal with and this made us so much more productive. I've been to five or six hackathons now and generally just about everyone turns out plenty of great stuff there.<p>We got a lot of great stuff done, had some fun, caught up with old friends and got to visit a new country (well, not me. The hackathon was here in Paris).
Disclaimer: I have never been in a hackaton.<p>That said, I simply don't think it's something people do every day, or every week, or frequently enough so that can severely alter one's lifestyle.<p>The author makes some good points, but they really apply to a more general day-to-day lifestyle.<p>There is nothing inherently damaging in a hackaton if you normally get enough sleep, eat healtily etc...
The most serious problem with hackathons is that many of them create the misconception that anyone can build a product in a weekend. Most cannot.<p>A few can build a great prototype; an even smaller miniscule few can build a product. But most hackathon participants produce either no code at all or terrible code.<p>This is fine if all you want is to make friends or build working relationships or make a throwaway prototype.<p>But, if you want to make a lasting code contribution, it's almost certainly got to be a small feature or bugfix on an established project, for which the problem definition, skill set required, and relevant parts of the codebase were documented in some detail before the hackathon. Very few hackathons have this level of preparation.<p>Better preparation or better expectation-setting -- that's what is needed.
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.
The energy, collaboration, exposure to new technology, people, ideas, creativity … far outweighs the cons here. No one’s forcing you to stay until 5AM and eat nothing but skittles and trail mix.
I've done a couple hackathons and while I did lose a good amount of sleep and loaded up on caffeine I found them to be fun and thoroughly enjoyable.<p>Too be honest I didn't find them any different than the times I have picked up a new game or book and stayed up all night playing/reading or spent time with friends playing marathons tournaments.<p>Hackathons are no better or worse than a majority of the other things we do, they just happen to be sponsored events where you don't spend all your own money on junk food.
I've only been to hackathons that last eight hours tops and usually involve terrific beer and food (ahh, Portland...).<p>Especially as a mom with a full-time job, I love the focus on getting things done at hackathons, as contrasted with other nerd gatherings, where the focus is on chit-chat.<p>Startup Weekend's 48 hours with no sleep model sounds very unhealthy to me, but an excuse to crunch away at a side project for a few hours with free beer and friendly nerds? Yes, please.
A couple points from my experiences, which are really just a sample of corporately sponsored hackathons in LA:<p>1. In about 6 hackathons over the course of the year, none had alcohol and only one had a post event get together at a bar (Startup Weekend).<p>2. Generally speaking the food tends to be pretty good quality if you behave yourself. I've never been to one where fruit and salad weren't available. You can drink a gallon of soda and eat a lot of fattening food if you prefer.<p>3. If you're paying attention you'll find that the people who leave at a decent hour, sleep, and come back early rested and refreshed get more done. I've always finished every project I've been a part of because I stay sharp.
Or learn from women: the Berlin Geekettes provided "real food" and a relaxation area with a Yoga coach for their Hackathon <a href="http://berlingeekettes.github.com/hackathon/" rel="nofollow">http://berlingeekettes.github.com/hackathon/</a>
When I was much younger (high school) I used to stay up all night with friends, code, drink Coke, eat unhealthy foods - for fun. No exchange of currency involved. Then I would go and sleep until 2PM. Now I can't do that any more.<p>The other point is that even activity that is generally considered healthy, like sports, when forced upon you by various means, is going to be a negative. Forcing someone to run adds stress. Running because you enjoy it and want to run reduces stress.
I disagree with his insistence that one must lose sleep to win a hackathon.<p>Our >40k employee corporation had our first annual corporate hackathon in 2012. I led the team of six that beat forty-seven other teams to win the whole hackathon. No one on my team took any less than twelve hours off between day one and day two.<p>A hackathon is about developing an impressive minimum viable product and demo. It is not about building a finished product.
...said by someone that is no good at hackathons. :)<p>Honestly though, hack on something you can finish in a few hours and go home and come back the next day to tell people about it. I'm still running twickery.com from the last F8 opengraph hackathon I went to. Spent a few hours and still use it now.<p>Hackathons give you an excuse to scratch an itch, learn something new and challenge yourself.
Moderation is the key. If you attend hackathons often, it really has negative impact on your health, just like spending all weekend nights in a disco, drinking alcohol until morning also does (and allot more people do the latter).
Hackathons are what you make of them: <a href="http://blog.abrah.am/2013/03/hackathons-are-what-you-make-of-them.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.abrah.am/2013/03/hackathons-are-what-you-make-of...</a>
Maybe the author has had a run of bad luck, or I've been lucky in the numerous hackathons I've attended, but I've never been a part of a hackathon where it met his "standard recipe for a Hackathon."
Lack of sleep alters human gene activity
<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5298948" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5298948</a>
The real crime is that programmers have so little time for the exploratory work that the career <i>requires</i> that they have to do all of that off-hours.<p>Doctors can read medical journals and call it "working time". Most programmers have feces thrown at them if they're caught learning on the job. This is just something we have to suffer until we develop a stronger tribal identity and demand the conditions of a profession (including ethical rights and obligations that supersede immediate managerial authority).<p>Do surgeons spend 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, cutting open bodies? Of course not. No one would allow it. They work a full work-week, but they spend a lot of that time keeping current with the field. That's how professions are supposed to work. Your metered work obligation is ~15 hours per week, and the other 25-40 you spend keeping current, networking, and performing other off-meter, self-directed work that is important to you and the profession.<p>Now, hackathons. There are two things one should know about that. The first is that the association of programming with the night hours is a bit of cultural legacy. Forty years ago, when computing resources were shared and scarce, night was the only time you could get low-priority (exploratory) jobs to run. So the hobbyists (young people, usually with access through a connection or favor) did their work at night. Now, we have enough in the way of resources that people can work at any time. Some people are most productive between 6 and 10 in the morning. Others are best from 8 pm to midnight. Whatever works.<p>The second is that hackathons seem, in many organizations, to exist to recapture the college lifestyle for people who haven't realized yet that It's Gone Forever. The hackathon recreates the "good old days" (?) of the 3:00 am, caffeine-fueled coding fests to get that hard-ass final project to work. It's not terribly unhealthy when you're a college student and have that kind of schedule autonomy (you can crash for a week) but it's a <i>terrible</i> idea to mix that lifestyle with the 9-to-5 regular workday. Also, most final projects are Done, submitted for a grade, and never need to be looked at again. This isn't the case for real-world software.<p>I tend to see most company's 20%-time and hack-day programs as negative spaces that define anything programmers actually enjoy as "not real work" (because they can be tricked into doing it "for free"). I can't even count the number of times I've seen people using 20%T programs to do things that, if they didn't have short-sighted imbeciles for managers, would just be regular-ol' working time.
Attended one sometime back. What hit me was that they didn't even bother to bring water and they remembered when I needed some. Needless to say there was pizza(and the way it was spread around was "yuck"), there was soft drink and beer and there was no water; neither any fruit or even trace of some healthy food or just food.<p>Nothing new or innovative came out other than sore backs, necks and a guy puking. Yes, there were some 'nice' hacks like <i>"this guy build this using that hooking into that that API and showing this again"</i>.<p>Midway, I felt like sleeping - there wasn't any space and I was sort of looked down upon with scorn - as in "he doesn't belong here". Well, I didn't. I had built a little web app that did some basic(very) search with Tw/Fb. Nth I would like to see or ponder over again. I slept in a corner anyway(had my sleeping bag).<p>Bad thing it wasn't fun either.<p>Moral of the story - it's good for sort of a meet-up, not for 'breaking the ground' with your ideas :-)<p>And if you have to organize one - make sure there's <i>food</i>, water and some place to rest. Proper lighting which can be adjusted in different corners/parts of the hall(or the large room).<p><i>PS</i>. And yes, keep it spacious and airy. Man is a messy animal :-\
The hacker community is pretty interesting. Someone hosts an event and brings a bunch of random junk and alcohol, telling people to get cracking on cool ideas. People don't get sleep, sit around, partake in random junk and alcohol, and it's the event's fault somehow. Pretty interesting.