9 ms·

The Hackathon Fast Track: From Campus to Silicon Valley

75 points by zonotope 12y ago

theyCallMeSwift 12y ago
If you're a student and are interested in finding a hackathon near you to participate in, check out https://mlh.io/events https://mlh.io/events for a list of great events in North America and https://mlh.io/eu https://mlh.io/eu for events in Europe. As someone who got their start at student hackathons (I wanted to be a lawyer before I went to my first one) and as someone who has been to hundreds of these in my life, I can definitely testify to the importance of this movement for students everywhere. This is where you learn the hard skills you need to be a programmer, designer, entrepreneur, or artist - not in the classroom.
- atroyn 12y ago
  I was with you right up until "This is where you learn the hard skills you need to be a programmer, designer, entrepreneur, or artist - not in the classroom.". If you want to have fun and really wring out your skillset as any of those things, Hackathons are a great place to do it. If you want to experience something new, if you want to meet interesting people, sure, hackathons are great. But a hackathon is a terrible environment to learn programming and entrepreneurship. Hackathons won't help you learn, or improve at programming. At a hackathon you're slapping APIs together and writing code that just barely works well enough for a demo. You have 24-48 hours, you don't have time to learn how to do things well, that can only come with experience and often, yes, in the classroom. If you want to be an entrepreneur, and I mean really execute on a product, talk to users, find the right niche, iterate on an idea and figure out a real business model, you won't do it at a hackathon. You're most interested in making something that will be entertaining for the audience there on that day. I'm not a designer or artist, so I can't speak for them, but I'm sure the situation is similar. I've been to at least half a dozen hackathons of various stripes in the last few years, and while they're tremendous fun, they don't replace learning.
  - theyCallMeSwift 12y ago
    I think the thing that you have to remember is that there are a lot of different types of learners out there. From the sound of it, the hackathon environment is not conducive to your particular learning style (which is totally fine). Hackathons are great for the kinds of people who learn by doing or who need lots of real-world practice to master skills. The other thing I'll point out is that a lot of "hard skills" that you need to be successful at those things are not necessarily technical. Examples: learning to work on a team, learning to deal with things going wrong on a deadline, learning to explain your work to other people. So, don't forget about those benefits too!
    - windust 12y ago
      I disagree, I think the hard skills for being a successful software developer are picked up by honing your craft daily working on the same project. Hackathons are too contrived since the goal is to have a finished product in 24 ~ 48 hours. Every time I have done one I throw away all the "Danger, Bad practice" signals from my sub conscience and work towards finishing the product/idea. Things that are important like maintainability (even if your hack is successful, and get investor funding you want to re-write it properly), coupling, testing, documentation, API, Memory profiling, Logging, performance optimizations, design patterns are thrown out the window to get that idyllic prototype out. Even working as a team, there is very little you gain from spending 48 hours with (mostly unknown) individuals than it is for your peers in a job where you actually have a favor economy. And I don't mean that there isn't any value on hack-a-thons. I think you're right on dealing with deadline pressures and the ability of working yourself out of a problem in a pinch are valuable skills. I just don't think that's where the "hard" skills needed to become a successful software developer are learned.
  - clay_to_n 12y ago
    One of the target audiences for college hackathons are college students who have very little experience. I think they are a great learning experience, at least your first few - they give you the confidence to sit down with a team and an idea and actually build it. When someone goes from never having built a mobile app to having a working iOS app they designed and built themselves with the help of a team and maybe a mentor, the hackathon was worth it. These are the weekends that will motivate them to decide to work on a startup with a friend, or realize they can be both programmer + designer at the same time.
- pnathan 12y ago
  This kind of environment bears no relation to the workforce. Further, a lot of people learned their programming skills in the classroom and then went on to succeed at work without any hackathons.
- squeaky-clean 12y ago
  Are there any resources like this for non-students? I used to enter programming tournaments a lot as a student, and wish I had the courage at the time to attend a hackathon. They seem very fun, but I am not really good at finding them. A few friends and I often have our own weekend hackathons, where we'll spend 48 hours intensely hammering out the basics for either an idea we've had, or one that we decide to come up with on the spot, but I'd love to try it out in a more social, competitive setting. I work at a startup already, it's not the learning "hard skills" part that interests me. I'd just like to meet more people who are interested in coding fun tools/toys.
  - TimFogarty 12y ago
    There's http://www.hackathonwatch.com/ http://www.hackathonwatch.com/ Also checking out eventbrite is a good idea. Non-student hackathons can be a pretty mixed bag so be careful which ones you choose to go to. Battlehack is a pretty fun hackathon that's not just for students: http://battlehack.net/ http://battlehack.net/
JacobEdelman 12y ago
Despite the optimistic tone in this article hackathons have definite problems. They have a contradiction between their party atmosphere and their high stakes. While they strive to provide an informal, fun event they also offer extremely large rewards (cash, internships, and even startup-funding are offered as rewards). Little seems to stand in the way of groups cheating and judging may seem incredibly subjective. Rumors abound as too how winners built their projects beforehand (a big no-no) or that the projects don't actually work. In trying to become both parties and job interviews hackathons are failing to be what they were meant to be, places to learn and create.
- ditonal 12y ago
  That's because most hackathans can't decide whether they want to be hackathons or pitchathons. As you have picked up, they really can't be both. Hacking is experimental, and it's fun, and it definitely is not optimized around impressing a VC or a journalist in 3 minutes or less. If you wanted to be a true hackathon, you would ban the investors and journalists and really ban judging altogether and just have everyone show everyone else their projects. Even the idea of "fun" is different between the two crowds, with the hacker crowd expecting the "fun" part to be the cool hacks themselves, and the journalist/finance crowd expecting the fun part to be the boozing up and making plans for how you spend your millions after you focused on optimizing a commercial product (ususally with more emphasis on marketability and monetization potential than cool tech). If you want to "win" a hackathon i.e. impress a VC/Angel/CEO/Journalist, of course you should prepare beforehand, it's extremely difficult to verify cheating and very little real technology can be built in that timespan and that environment (party wooo!). You should also focus way more on the design and pitch then on the functionality, since the judges only have the time to evaluate the design/pitch. The good news is you can also treat the pitchatons like a hackathon and just ignore the judging/prizes, they can still be nice networking events regardless and times to learn some new things/APIs. Or you can try to game the prizes, but either way I wouldn't take them too seriously. How many hackathon projects turn into anything real anyway? The current Hackathon culture is indicative of a general tech and investing culture of picking "hot" ideas made by charismatic teams over people doing true technological innovation which takes sustained, serious effort. The real innovation is what ends up making an impact, but the little prototype parties can be a good stepping stone into the industry.
birken 12y ago
> Likewise, students say hackathons are an ideal way to test-drive the experience of working at a start-up before committing to a job. I don't really understand this. Working at a startup is not about sleeping 2 hours a night and/or churning out a new products in 36 hours. It is about committing to an idea for years and continuing to persevere when everything goes wrong and things look horrible (which is inevitable). I'm not saying hackathons are bad, they seem fun. But in terms of recruiting, I'd much rather work with somebody who spend 1 year working on the same idea, rather than somebody who has done 20 hackathons on all sorts of different stuff.
- theyCallMeSwift 12y ago
  One thing that the author missed, but might shed some light on your point, is that many of the top student hackers in this movement actually do specialize in a single tool or technique across many events. Great example: Shariq Hashme (the first person mentioned in the article) has a long, successful track record of making amazing Oculus Rift and constructed hardware hacks. So while the projects themselves might be different, the students do often demonstrate that commitment to mastery that you're looking for.
- rjvir 12y ago
  Please suggest a better alternative to simulate the culture and mentality of a startup, for a typical 18 year old who is not a part of the world of tech.
  - untog 12y ago
    Getting together with friends in your spare time to make a web site/app?
    - TimFogarty 12y ago
      Hackathons are a pretty good way of starting something like this for a college student (though obviously not the only way). I know several groups people who met at hackathons then went on to start a larger project together (often not the same project they did at the hackathon). That's one of the nice thing about college hackathons - you get to meet other students who like to build stuff in their spare time.
thoughtchrome 12y ago
We have company sponsored hackathons for internal projects. At first I dug it, but beginning to think this mainly serves to squeeze a weekend of work out of devs and to get something done fast, sometimes fast != good/sustainable/performant/well tested. But hey, free tshirt and unlimited diet coke, so that is something :-/
- theyCallMeSwift 12y ago
  Company run hackathons != student hackathons. http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that-hackathon/ http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that-hackat...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
shithhsaid 12y ago
Obligatory plug with select examples from the Hackathon culture: https://twitter.com/shit_hh_said https://twitter.com/shit_hh_said Relevant discussion: "Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9205177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9205177
- raverbashing 12y ago
  "Students who believe to be 1000x SE because they can stick two APIs together and use bootstrap end-up to be very condescending older engineers." Nope, reality catches up to them. Fast.
pnathan 12y ago
The wheel turns: it used to be programming competitions, now it's hackathons. What will be the next fad offering for glory and jobs that isn't doing the grind work of hitting the books?
- bouk 12y ago
  Programming competitions actually require deep algorithmic knowledge and lots of training
- TimFogarty 12y ago
  The people who do well at hackathons and programming competitions are often excellent students. And extra-curricular activities as a way of learning more and improving yourself are generally considered good for students, right? That's one reason universities support programming competitions, hackathons, CS clubs, etc. I'd go so far as to say the best students are the ones who love their subject so much they do it in their spare time too.
peter303 12y ago
Mature software companies dont produce good software in this fashion. Most such apps, if they ever get published, end up in the unsold depths of App stores.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

75 points by zonotope 12y ago

If you're a student and are interested in finding a hackathon near you to participate in, check out https://mlh.io/events https://mlh.io/events for a list of great events in North America and https://mlh.io/eu https://mlh.io/eu for events in Europe. As someone who got their start at student hackathons (I wanted to be a lawyer before I went to my first one) and as someone who has been to hundreds of these in my life, I can definitely testify to the importance of this movement for students everywhere. This is where you learn the hard skills you need to be a programmer, designer, entrepreneur, or artist - not in the classroom.

atroyn 12y ago
I was with you right up until "This is where you learn the hard skills you need to be a programmer, designer, entrepreneur, or artist - not in the classroom.". If you want to have fun and really wring out your skillset as any of those things, Hackathons are a great place to do it. If you want to experience something new, if you want to meet interesting people, sure, hackathons are great. But a hackathon is a terrible environment to learn programming and entrepreneurship. Hackathons won't help you learn, or improve at programming. At a hackathon you're slapping APIs together and writing code that just barely works well enough for a demo. You have 24-48 hours, you don't have time to learn how to do things well, that can only come with experience and often, yes, in the classroom. If you want to be an entrepreneur, and I mean really execute on a product, talk to users, find the right niche, iterate on an idea and figure out a real business model, you won't do it at a hackathon. You're most interested in making something that will be entertaining for the audience there on that day. I'm not a designer or artist, so I can't speak for them, but I'm sure the situation is similar. I've been to at least half a dozen hackathons of various stripes in the last few years, and while they're tremendous fun, they don't replace learning.
- theyCallMeSwift 12y ago
  I think the thing that you have to remember is that there are a lot of different types of learners out there. From the sound of it, the hackathon environment is not conducive to your particular learning style (which is totally fine). Hackathons are great for the kinds of people who learn by doing or who need lots of real-world practice to master skills. The other thing I'll point out is that a lot of "hard skills" that you need to be successful at those things are not necessarily technical. Examples: learning to work on a team, learning to deal with things going wrong on a deadline, learning to explain your work to other people. So, don't forget about those benefits too!
  - windust 12y ago
    I disagree, I think the hard skills for being a successful software developer are picked up by honing your craft daily working on the same project. Hackathons are too contrived since the goal is to have a finished product in 24 ~ 48 hours. Every time I have done one I throw away all the "Danger, Bad practice" signals from my sub conscience and work towards finishing the product/idea. Things that are important like maintainability (even if your hack is successful, and get investor funding you want to re-write it properly), coupling, testing, documentation, API, Memory profiling, Logging, performance optimizations, design patterns are thrown out the window to get that idyllic prototype out. Even working as a team, there is very little you gain from spending 48 hours with (mostly unknown) individuals than it is for your peers in a job where you actually have a favor economy. And I don't mean that there isn't any value on hack-a-thons. I think you're right on dealing with deadline pressures and the ability of working yourself out of a problem in a pinch are valuable skills. I just don't think that's where the "hard" skills needed to become a successful software developer are learned.
- clay_to_n 12y ago
  One of the target audiences for college hackathons are college students who have very little experience. I think they are a great learning experience, at least your first few - they give you the confidence to sit down with a team and an idea and actually build it. When someone goes from never having built a mobile app to having a working iOS app they designed and built themselves with the help of a team and maybe a mentor, the hackathon was worth it. These are the weekends that will motivate them to decide to work on a startup with a friend, or realize they can be both programmer + designer at the same time.
pnathan 12y ago
This kind of environment bears no relation to the workforce. Further, a lot of people learned their programming skills in the classroom and then went on to succeed at work without any hackathons.
squeaky-clean 12y ago
Are there any resources like this for non-students? I used to enter programming tournaments a lot as a student, and wish I had the courage at the time to attend a hackathon. They seem very fun, but I am not really good at finding them. A few friends and I often have our own weekend hackathons, where we'll spend 48 hours intensely hammering out the basics for either an idea we've had, or one that we decide to come up with on the spot, but I'd love to try it out in a more social, competitive setting. I work at a startup already, it's not the learning "hard skills" part that interests me. I'd just like to meet more people who are interested in coding fun tools/toys.
- TimFogarty 12y ago
  There's http://www.hackathonwatch.com/ http://www.hackathonwatch.com/ Also checking out eventbrite is a good idea. Non-student hackathons can be a pretty mixed bag so be careful which ones you choose to go to. Battlehack is a pretty fun hackathon that's not just for students: http://battlehack.net/ http://battlehack.net/

JacobEdelman 12y ago

Despite the optimistic tone in this article hackathons have definite problems. They have a contradiction between their party atmosphere and their high stakes. While they strive to provide an informal, fun event they also offer extremely large rewards (cash, internships, and even startup-funding are offered as rewards). Little seems to stand in the way of groups cheating and judging may seem incredibly subjective. Rumors abound as too how winners built their projects beforehand (a big no-no) or that the projects don't actually work. In trying to become both parties and job interviews hackathons are failing to be what they were meant to be, places to learn and create.

ditonal 12y ago
That's because most hackathans can't decide whether they want to be hackathons or pitchathons. As you have picked up, they really can't be both. Hacking is experimental, and it's fun, and it definitely is not optimized around impressing a VC or a journalist in 3 minutes or less. If you wanted to be a true hackathon, you would ban the investors and journalists and really ban judging altogether and just have everyone show everyone else their projects. Even the idea of "fun" is different between the two crowds, with the hacker crowd expecting the "fun" part to be the cool hacks themselves, and the journalist/finance crowd expecting the fun part to be the boozing up and making plans for how you spend your millions after you focused on optimizing a commercial product (ususally with more emphasis on marketability and monetization potential than cool tech). If you want to "win" a hackathon i.e. impress a VC/Angel/CEO/Journalist, of course you should prepare beforehand, it's extremely difficult to verify cheating and very little real technology can be built in that timespan and that environment (party wooo!). You should also focus way more on the design and pitch then on the functionality, since the judges only have the time to evaluate the design/pitch. The good news is you can also treat the pitchatons like a hackathon and just ignore the judging/prizes, they can still be nice networking events regardless and times to learn some new things/APIs. Or you can try to game the prizes, but either way I wouldn't take them too seriously. How many hackathon projects turn into anything real anyway? The current Hackathon culture is indicative of a general tech and investing culture of picking "hot" ideas made by charismatic teams over people doing true technological innovation which takes sustained, serious effort. The real innovation is what ends up making an impact, but the little prototype parties can be a good stepping stone into the industry.

birken 12y ago

> Likewise, students say hackathons are an ideal way to test-drive the experience of working at a start-up before committing to a job. I don't really understand this. Working at a startup is not about sleeping 2 hours a night and/or churning out a new products in 36 hours. It is about committing to an idea for years and continuing to persevere when everything goes wrong and things look horrible (which is inevitable). I'm not saying hackathons are bad, they seem fun. But in terms of recruiting, I'd much rather work with somebody who spend 1 year working on the same idea, rather than somebody who has done 20 hackathons on all sorts of different stuff.

theyCallMeSwift 12y ago
One thing that the author missed, but might shed some light on your point, is that many of the top student hackers in this movement actually do specialize in a single tool or technique across many events. Great example: Shariq Hashme (the first person mentioned in the article) has a long, successful track record of making amazing Oculus Rift and constructed hardware hacks. So while the projects themselves might be different, the students do often demonstrate that commitment to mastery that you're looking for.
rjvir 12y ago
Please suggest a better alternative to simulate the culture and mentality of a startup, for a typical 18 year old who is not a part of the world of tech.
- untog 12y ago
  Getting together with friends in your spare time to make a web site/app?
  - TimFogarty 12y ago
    Hackathons are a pretty good way of starting something like this for a college student (though obviously not the only way). I know several groups people who met at hackathons then went on to start a larger project together (often not the same project they did at the hackathon). That's one of the nice thing about college hackathons - you get to meet other students who like to build stuff in their spare time.

thoughtchrome 12y ago

We have company sponsored hackathons for internal projects. At first I dug it, but beginning to think this mainly serves to squeeze a weekend of work out of devs and to get something done fast, sometimes fast != good/sustainable/performant/well tested. But hey, free tshirt and unlimited diet coke, so that is something :-/

theyCallMeSwift 12y ago
Company run hackathons != student hackathons. http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that-hackathon/ http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that-hackat...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

shithhsaid 12y ago

Obligatory plug with select examples from the Hackathon culture: https://twitter.com/shit_hh_said https://twitter.com/shit_hh_said Relevant discussion: "Ask HN: The rising “Hackathon Hackers” culture" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9205177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9205177

raverbashing 12y ago
"Students who believe to be 1000x SE because they can stick two APIs together and use bootstrap end-up to be very condescending older engineers." Nope, reality catches up to them. Fast.

pnathan 12y ago

The wheel turns: it used to be programming competitions, now it's hackathons. What will be the next fad offering for glory and jobs that isn't doing the grind work of hitting the books?

bouk 12y ago
Programming competitions actually require deep algorithmic knowledge and lots of training
TimFogarty 12y ago
The people who do well at hackathons and programming competitions are often excellent students. And extra-curricular activities as a way of learning more and improving yourself are generally considered good for students, right? That's one reason universities support programming competitions, hackathons, CS clubs, etc. I'd go so far as to say the best students are the ones who love their subject so much they do it in their spare time too.

peter303 12y ago

Mature software companies dont produce good software in this fashion. Most such apps, if they ever get published, end up in the unsold depths of App stores.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]