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Interesting, I'm glad to see people have positive experiences with Hackathons despite my own being horribly toxic. The reasoning given in the article is actuall
by HashHishBang 12y ago
Interesting, I'm glad to see people have positive experiences with Hackathons despite my own being horribly toxic. The reasoning given in the article is actually the impetus behind my decision to ditch hackathons (and later the "development" community in favor of QA Automation).
The 'competition' portion of a hackathon usually messes me up in both approach to the work and the desired end goal. Whereas it seems to be a major portion of the attraction for the blog author and a lot of people in this thread.
Perhaps it is a matter of teammates that I have participated with thus far, but trying to hack together a minimum-passable-product (note: not even viable but ~passable~) stuck me as an utter waste.
- jonmarkgo 12y agoIf you go into the event hoping to build something productive or that has longevity, it will likely feel like a waste. But that's really not the point of hackathons, and seems to be a major factor that people take issue with. Especially for students/new programmers, the goal is to tinker with technology, have fun, and discover like-minded collaborators in a risk-free environment. You might be thinking - hey! a competition isn't risk-free - but really, compared to a work or academic environment there is far less risk involved with building something ambitious or using a technology you are completely unfamiliar with. The best hackathons don't focus on the competitive element, but instead create a system where people are rewarded for ambitious but not perfectly polished work. I wrote another blog post about that here: http://news.mlh.io/are-hackathon-prizes-the-worst-thing-since-moldy-sliced-bread-04-18-2014 http://news.mlh.io/are-hackathon-prizes-the-worst-thing-sinc...