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.
It seems to mesh well with another part of the developers lifestyle though: a severe lack of free time.
"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."
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.
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 are probably a lot of fun. After you have other commitments in life, it just doesn't work.
"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.)
The internal hackathons at Yahoo (Europe) were essentially an exercise in futility. They jumped on the hackathon bandwagon, but were unprepared to deal with the after effects of a hackday - what to do with these ideas.
From what I saw, hackday was used to pretend the organisation cared about the ideas of it's engineers and web developers, but at a safe enough distance not to affect their product roadmap. When push came to shove we were all enthusiastically encouraged to patent our ideas, because it protects us from evil people stealing all our ideas. Naturally I refused.
The Yahoo Open Hackdays also, was an exercise in futility. Yahoo didn't do anything with ideas generated, or encouraged the people who attended and built something. It was just a two day event over a weekend where a venue was populated by groups of people who may be building something, or not. Esssentially it was just a marketing ploy to get developers using the Yahoo APIs for a weekend.
Looking at that, these hackdays offered no value. I don't need a hackday / hack-weekend to work on ideas I consider interesting. I don't need to be in a noisy drafty building where the roof opens up during a thunderstorm ( http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2007/06/hack_day_... ).
I gave up on the internal hackdays, after participating in two: winning one, and getting a notable mention for the second. Ideas are no good gathering dust on the shelf. And all hackdays accomplished was for the company to have an inkling on the ideas I was working on in my own time, so they could decide to claim ownership if they liked.
Open Hackdays are only useful to meet up with people you haven't seen for a long time. So having free beer and pizza is useful, I guess.
To be honest, the things I did gain from being at an open hackday:
* Watching James Aylett build a social network from scratch, and fully unit-tested. That demolished most of my reservations of unit-testing and development agility.
* Meeting some of fine Yahoo US folk during that time: Ryan Kennedy and Dav Glass.
* The internal hackday win led me to meeting David Filo to give him a quick demo. Not often I meet people who are also Wikipedia entries.
If you're running a hackathon in a company do it on company time and make sure to be prepared to do something with the ideas they generate. Results of our recent hackathon is a good example how to do it: out of 7 out of 14 projects are finding their way to the product roadmap. We run it on Thursday-Friday with demos on Monday morning.
If you don't follow up, event may backfire and will remain an example how a company merely pays lip service to ideas coming from developers.
It all depends how you approach it. We recently went away for a week (with our wives) as a development team, locked ourselves in a rural cottage, and built the first iteration of an iPhone app for the site.
We worked normal hours, spent evenings relaxing, and still got a huge amount done in the week because we weren't in the usual environment of having distractions and other things popping up. A great time was had, and because we hadn't spent a weekend coding for 36 hours straight we were fresh and ready to go on Monday morning.
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.
The organizers of last 2 hackathon I participated seems to think that there is no meaning in providing plain water when they have soft drinks for the event. Not to mention the event was held in a pretty remote event. I had to drive 20 minutes to get a drink that don't make my mouth feels like ant feeds.
Article text (there were also about three images):
Hackathons are bad for you.
I love developer communities. I love the spirit, the comradery and energy. But in the last couple of years or so, Hackthons have spread through the community like a plague. There are Hackathons around technologies, ideologies and everything in between. And I feel there is an urgent need to eradicate them.
Here is my main beef with Hackathon. They’re encouraging and spreading a perverse culture of unhealthy lifestyle and unsustainable workflow which has been made popular by sensational media and film.
Here’s a standard recipe for a Hackathon.
Gather a bunch of developers in a location.
Supply them copious amounts of junk food, booze and caffeine.
Tell them to get cracking for 24hrs.
Sounds familiar?
Sleep
There is an almost masochistic take on sleep deprivation in the developer community. (It might be true with other professions, but let’s focus on the devs.) Working late into the night and not sleeping for days is lauded and almost considered a necessity by many these days. Hackthons, many of which last 24hrs, only serve to glorify that.
It is well-known that sleep deprivation has only negative effects on health. Sadly, popular culture in the community has only strengthened the indifference towards health. Y-combinator’s popularized (and prefered?) archetype for founder/developers who eat ramen and code into the night, or the life of Mark Zuckerberg as showcased in the movie The Social Network only make things worse.
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.
When was the last time you wrote a piece of code while being totally sleep deprived, and looked at it after you woke up to say it was the most beautiful, elegant and awesome piece of code you’ve ever written?
A good nights rest and a fresh mind are critical for a good developer, that’s one thing that Hackathons completely miss.
Food and Drink
Next to sleep, your body needs good fuel to keep going. And NO! I don’t mean coffee. As much as I love my coffee, binging on coffee, red bull or is rarely good for focus. Not to mention alcohol, which makes matters worse.
It’s a short-term vs long-term trade-off. Coffee (and possibly alcohol, although I am skeptical abt it), do help you feel more focused in the short-term. But both caffeine and alcohol are diuretics and only make you lose more water in the long-term. A dehydrated body isn’t much of a help when you need your brain to focus and solve problems. “When was the last time you saw an isotonic drink at a Hackathon?”
Junk food isn’t much of a help to that. I am not even going to touch on long-term effects of eating high carb diets. The usual Hackathon menu of pizza and candy is full of carbohydrates. While sugar highs are great for short-term focus (maybe??) you tend to feel hungry very quickly after a carb heavy meal. That only means you going around for another round of pizza/candy etc. Not really the best way to focus is it?
Sedentary lifestyle
More and more research is showing a link between a sitting lifestyle and health issues. Developers are unfortunate to have a job which is inherently sedentary. Hackthons again make it worse by inciting developers to sit at the same place for 24hrs. “I’m sure your back will thank you at the end of that!”.
And what’s worse is since most Hackathon are held on weekends, the one day you usually get to be active is also spent being sedentary.
Distraction
Hackathons are distraction. There are a ton of things going on. People are talking, discussing ideas, giving talks or just hanging out. All that is competing for your attention while you need to focus. Add caffeine to that mix and that’s one hell of a party on thought in your mind. Noise cancelling headphones help, but then what’s the point?
Solutions?
I’m pretty sure there are better ways to organize hackthons. Having th...
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.
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.
The logic does not prove that something is worth doing, it proves that the one particular argument for something being not worth doing is invalid. "This can lead to hypothetical bad result x" isn't a valid argument by itself, meth is only bad because the badness is sufficiently bad enough, not simply because it is not the healthiest possible choice.
It is a fallacy to assume that if a particular argument is wrong that the opposite of its conclusions must be true. You can easily think everything the blog post says is incorrect and also think hackathons are bad.
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 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..
As others have posted, scientific evidence shows no diuretic effect. You are peeing a lot because you are drinking a lot. You would have to pee just as much if you were drinking water.
"Contrary to popular belief, caffeine does not act as a diuretic when consumed in moderation (less than five cups a day or 500 to 600 milligrams), and does not lead to dehydration or to a water-electrolyte imbalance; current evidence suggests that caffeinated beverages contribute to the body's daily fluid requirements no differently from pure water."
This particular misconception is kind of a pet peeve of mine, and it drives me nuts how widespread it is.
Not true. I have gone off coffee and caffeine a couple of times over the last 6 or 7 years. When I drink a few cups of coffee, I'm up to the bathroom a half dozen times a day. When I switch to a water bottle, I only have to go maybe once per day (during work hours). The difference is stark and the amount of liquid is not the issue.
Is immature snarkiness really needed when someone is talking about a real physical effect carefully observed over years?
Caffeine gives me an urgency to urinate. Having that first urination in the morning after drinking coffee is just like the effect many people describe after drinking the beer. See "Breaking the seal".
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.
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.
In my experience (at various hackathons, global game jams and startup weekends), the tactic that's given me most success is to be very strict about what features to implement, and to keep any unfamiliar technologies at a minimum. When you only have so much time, don't waste it writing profile settings pages (why even have auth at all? everyone just types in a username and they're logged in as that person now!), don't waste time dealing with any browser compatibility (just program for chrome, or whatever tablet you're going to demo on). There are so many things that I've seen other people mess around with that just wastes your time and energy.
Regarding unfamiliar technologies, choose a stack you're used to (that way, you don't waste time debugging/googling how to do something) and use whatever helps you get things done fast. If anything, have one unknown thing in the mix so you can take advantage of the learning opportunity. Just make sure that thing is necessary for the product you're working on of course - for example, use mongodb's geospatial indexes for that geo-aware app, or try out d3 for those nifty interactive charts, or use websockets/zeromq for a real-time system.
> Working late into the night and not sleeping for days is lauded and almost considered a necessity by many these days.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Wow you conjured images of cocaine addicts in my head. Or the less ominous 'sugar rush'. Hackathons should be peaks of activity / motivation / energy, not THE place where you learn 'nearly everything'. You need to find a way to motivate yourself in a calm and relaxed environment.
Coming from zero experience in programming, there wasn't a better place to begin learning. Where better to begin learning than in a room full of top-notch programmers and experts who are 100% willing to help you out?
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.
Nothing new or innovative came out other than sore backs, necks and a guy puking. Yes, there were some 'nice' hacks like "this guy build this using that hooking into that that API and showing this again".
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).
Bad thing it wasn't fun either.
Moral of the story - it's good for sort of a meet-up, not for 'breaking the ground' with your ideas :-)
And if you have to organize one - make sure there's food, water and some place to rest. Proper lighting which can be adjusted in different corners/parts of the hall(or the large room).
PS. And yes, keep it spacious and airy. Man is a messy animal :-\",
Yup, which is why those of us that do care about our health just can't wait to maintain the code of those that feel this way after they either die young or end up feeble and unable to maintain themselves much less their projects!
Your brain and whatever else on your body you're currently using to get code from brain to computer are surrounded by a lot things that are important to keep them running and talking to each other. Forget that, and they'll stop. Quickly, and painfully.
I would disagree with that point then. Staying up most of the night and therefore sleep depriving yourself will make you less cognitively able the next morning compared to if you slept 8 hours, but the amount you are able to write in the time you chose to stay up outweighs the slight increase in productivity you would have the next morning from sleeping all night.
And more specifically, even to those of us where it is a high priority, it doesn't have to be 24/7. Like going partying at the weekend is for many "healthy" people, so things like hackathons and Red Bull binges can be for hackers too.
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 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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
Hackatons are fun. I don't get the point of saying that hanging out with people with similar, drinking beer and eating pizza is somehow bad for you. Maybe is about seeing it less as a competition and more like a regular social event.
When I moved to SF I knew next to nobody. I worked freelance at a coworking place and went to hackathons. Most of my SF friends are from these social environments.
I think the bigger issue here is not that they can't be fun, it's, basically, coding under duress and how society views programmers. Sure, if you're going to a hackathon to party and hang out, then it's not really a hackathon - it's a party. If you have to produce a usable result, then you will fail.
The op is absolutely right - we are constrained by our physical bodies and they require the proper fuel and rest in order to operate at peak efficiency. Just because you're using your brain instead of certain muscles, doesn't mean you can consume garbage. This isn't a bad on your comment as much as is it a comment on society as a whole. The whole Zuck bs legend has really damaged programming on multiple levels and it completely reject that ethos.
I've worked with devs that ate garbage all day, couldn't sleep, always came in late (they were non-drinkers too) and their job performance sucked. Their attention sucked. Their attitude sucked. Their code sucked. Needless to say they were all fired. But alas, this is a tale not about the voices of reason, but of bs movies and news headlines and even tho the op is critical (realistic?) of this, that opinion I'm sure is in the minority.
> if you're going to a hackathon to party and hang out, then it's not really a hackathon
so a hackathon is only coding without socializing to get victory? Accept that people don't generally see hackaton as a competition but as a place to have fun.
> we are constrained by our physical bodies and they require the proper fuel and rest in order to operate at peak efficiency
yes, and a hackaton can't ask people to gather somewhere they don't necessarily live for days, weeks, etc...
I went to my first hackathon last weekend, and I'll agree, it definitely is a treat! It's a lot of fun to practice something you don't normally do, but I definitely think it's not something to do for the result. The process and crunch time is what really makes it any fun.
What surprised me the most is how much time I needed alone. A lot of my best design decisions come to me when I'm holed up in the shower, and the hustle and bustle of a hackathon isn't anything close to that. I couldn't make any sound design decisions while really "at" the hackathon. I ended up repeating the same pattern: I'd hole up in a corner for a bit, or wander off for a walk. Then with a little focus, I could figure out what I was actually coding!
Coming "back" to the hackathon, however, was really important, as it kept my work ethic honest. I have a problem with premature optimization (not to just mention laziness), and the environment made me want to get back to work. You don't want to be the odd kid out just staring at browser tabs all day!
Sometimes, you gotta churn out code after you've made all the sexy design decisions, where the work is really just laborious idea-to-code elaboration. That's usually really hard for me to do, but a hackathon is a really good place for that sort of work.
Yea, I definitely know that within my college experiences with hackathons, it was something that everyone looked forward to. You would be able to create something cool, hangout with your friends, get free food, and just have a great time.
...said by someone that is no good at hackathons. :)
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.
Hackathons give you an excuse to scratch an itch, learn something new and challenge yourself.
I find it odd that internal motivation could be so low that someone would need to wait for an external motivation, like a hackathon, in order to do something they wanted to do, like learn something new or challenge themselves.
Sometimes it's about having an excuse to make the time. I like the idea of building small games but I can never find the time until I specifically book a weekend "off" to do Ludum Dare.
The best piece of advice that no one ever seems to give about hackathons:
--
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.
--
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Sounds familiar. I think there's basically two types of developers (and people): extroverts and introverts. Hackathons, 'social' coding, pair programming and whatnots are for the extroverted category; external stimulation (in the form of other people, the ability to bounce ideas off of them) is what stimulates them, while introverts don't need that to become stimulated; they can, in fact, be overstimulated and end up trying to filter out the excess of impulses, which is draining to them, not to mention distracting.
I've attended two hackathons. The first was for Open Government projects, and it was well-organized and low-pressure. I didn't pull an all-nighter, but I doubt anyone did. I attended the whole thing and really enjoyed myself.
The other was a much bigger affair with at least as many biz folk and designers as programmers. I was pitched on all kinds of half-baked ambitious ideas. It seemed like a big scheme to get programmers to build MVPs on spec. After the first night I didn't go back.
Something I like a lot that is much more sustainable is weekly "hack nights." Here in Portland we have many of these. Generally they meet at a pub, and there are maybe 10 people who show up, work on the side projects, and socialize. I've found those to be great: you meet people, you catch up, and you get a little done. And around 10 or 11 you go home.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadIt seems to mesh well with another part of the developers lifestyle though: a severe lack of free time.
"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."
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.
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 are probably a lot of fun. After you have other commitments in life, it just doesn't work.
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.)
From what I saw, hackday was used to pretend the organisation cared about the ideas of it's engineers and web developers, but at a safe enough distance not to affect their product roadmap. When push came to shove we were all enthusiastically encouraged to patent our ideas, because it protects us from evil people stealing all our ideas. Naturally I refused.
The Yahoo Open Hackdays also, was an exercise in futility. Yahoo didn't do anything with ideas generated, or encouraged the people who attended and built something. It was just a two day event over a weekend where a venue was populated by groups of people who may be building something, or not. Esssentially it was just a marketing ploy to get developers using the Yahoo APIs for a weekend.
Looking at that, these hackdays offered no value. I don't need a hackday / hack-weekend to work on ideas I consider interesting. I don't need to be in a noisy drafty building where the roof opens up during a thunderstorm ( http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2007/06/hack_day_... ).
I gave up on the internal hackdays, after participating in two: winning one, and getting a notable mention for the second. Ideas are no good gathering dust on the shelf. And all hackdays accomplished was for the company to have an inkling on the ideas I was working on in my own time, so they could decide to claim ownership if they liked.
Open Hackdays are only useful to meet up with people you haven't seen for a long time. So having free beer and pizza is useful, I guess.
To be honest, the things I did gain from being at an open hackday:
* Watching James Aylett build a social network from scratch, and fully unit-tested. That demolished most of my reservations of unit-testing and development agility.
* Meeting some of fine Yahoo US folk during that time: Ryan Kennedy and Dav Glass.
* The internal hackday win led me to meeting David Filo to give him a quick demo. Not often I meet people who are also Wikipedia entries.
* held on a weekday (so it wasn't asking salaried employees to come in and "work for free" on a weekend)
* engaged the whole company, not just the technical employees
* no expectation that you had to go for the full 24 hours straight
* no expectation that you'd finish anything but a prototype in those 24 hours
* a plan in place to follow up on the most successful ideas and prototypes that were worked on (and that plan has largely been kept up)
If you don't follow up, event may backfire and will remain an example how a company merely pays lip service to ideas coming from developers.
We worked normal hours, spent evenings relaxing, and still got a huge amount done in the week because we weren't in the usual environment of having distractions and other things popping up. A great time was had, and because we hadn't spent a weekend coding for 36 hours straight we were fresh and ready to go on Monday morning.
At least provide healthy options, particularly bottled/filtered water instead of just soft drinks and booze.
The organizers of last 2 hackathon I participated seems to think that there is no meaning in providing plain water when they have soft drinks for the event. Not to mention the event was held in a pretty remote event. I had to drive 20 minutes to get a drink that don't make my mouth feels like ant feeds.
Hackathons are bad for you.
I love developer communities. I love the spirit, the comradery and energy. But in the last couple of years or so, Hackthons have spread through the community like a plague. There are Hackathons around technologies, ideologies and everything in between. And I feel there is an urgent need to eradicate them.
Here is my main beef with Hackathon. They’re encouraging and spreading a perverse culture of unhealthy lifestyle and unsustainable workflow which has been made popular by sensational media and film.
Here’s a standard recipe for a Hackathon.
Gather a bunch of developers in a location. Supply them copious amounts of junk food, booze and caffeine. Tell them to get cracking for 24hrs. Sounds familiar?
Sleep
There is an almost masochistic take on sleep deprivation in the developer community. (It might be true with other professions, but let’s focus on the devs.) Working late into the night and not sleeping for days is lauded and almost considered a necessity by many these days. Hackthons, many of which last 24hrs, only serve to glorify that.
It is well-known that sleep deprivation has only negative effects on health. Sadly, popular culture in the community has only strengthened the indifference towards health. Y-combinator’s popularized (and prefered?) archetype for founder/developers who eat ramen and code into the night, or the life of Mark Zuckerberg as showcased in the movie The Social Network only make things worse.
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.
When was the last time you wrote a piece of code while being totally sleep deprived, and looked at it after you woke up to say it was the most beautiful, elegant and awesome piece of code you’ve ever written?
A good nights rest and a fresh mind are critical for a good developer, that’s one thing that Hackathons completely miss.
Food and Drink
Next to sleep, your body needs good fuel to keep going. And NO! I don’t mean coffee. As much as I love my coffee, binging on coffee, red bull or is rarely good for focus. Not to mention alcohol, which makes matters worse.
It’s a short-term vs long-term trade-off. Coffee (and possibly alcohol, although I am skeptical abt it), do help you feel more focused in the short-term. But both caffeine and alcohol are diuretics and only make you lose more water in the long-term. A dehydrated body isn’t much of a help when you need your brain to focus and solve problems. “When was the last time you saw an isotonic drink at a Hackathon?”
Junk food isn’t much of a help to that. I am not even going to touch on long-term effects of eating high carb diets. The usual Hackathon menu of pizza and candy is full of carbohydrates. While sugar highs are great for short-term focus (maybe??) you tend to feel hungry very quickly after a carb heavy meal. That only means you going around for another round of pizza/candy etc. Not really the best way to focus is it?
Sedentary lifestyle
More and more research is showing a link between a sitting lifestyle and health issues. Developers are unfortunate to have a job which is inherently sedentary. Hackthons again make it worse by inciting developers to sit at the same place for 24hrs. “I’m sure your back will thank you at the end of that!”.
And what’s worse is since most Hackathon are held on weekends, the one day you usually get to be active is also spent being sedentary.
Distraction
Hackathons are distraction. There are a ton of things going on. People are talking, discussing ideas, giving talks or just hanging out. All that is competing for your attention while you need to focus. Add caffeine to that mix and that’s one hell of a party on thought in your mind. Noise cancelling headphones help, but then what’s the point?
Solutions?
I’m pretty sure there are better ways to organize hackthons. Having th...
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.
it's meant to be fun. As long as you're not doing them all the time - who cares?
I enjoy doing these things in moderation though, do we need more nanny stating to tell me what I can enjoy doing?
It is a fallacy to assume that if a particular argument is wrong that the opposite of its conclusions must be true. You can easily think everything the blog post says is incorrect and also think hackathons are bad.
"Contrary to popular belief, caffeine does not act as a diuretic when consumed in moderation (less than five cups a day or 500 to 600 milligrams), and does not lead to dehydration or to a water-electrolyte imbalance; current evidence suggests that caffeinated beverages contribute to the body's daily fluid requirements no differently from pure water."
This particular misconception is kind of a pet peeve of mine, and it drives me nuts how widespread it is.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_coffee#Laxati...
Caffeine gives me an urgency to urinate. Having that first urination in the morning after drinking coffee is just like the effect many people describe after drinking the beer. See "Breaking the seal".
Googling the subject shows confirmation from health and medical web sites. Here's one from the Mayo Clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/urinary-incontinence/DS0040...
If you aren't, then recognize that occasional deviations from an otherwise healthy schedule and lifestyle aren't lethal or actually bad.
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.
Regarding unfamiliar technologies, choose a stack you're used to (that way, you don't waste time debugging/googling how to do something) and use whatever helps you get things done fast. If anything, have one unknown thing in the mix so you can take advantage of the learning opportunity. Just make sure that thing is necessary for the product you're working on of course - for example, use mongodb's geospatial indexes for that geo-aware app, or try out d3 for those nifty interactive charts, or use websockets/zeromq for a real-time system.
> 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.
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.
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/head.html
I just wish I didn't have to get up again in the morning.
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.
Nothing new or innovative came out other than sore backs, necks and a guy puking. Yes, there were some 'nice' hacks like "this guy build this using that hooking into that that API and showing this again".
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).
Bad thing it wasn't fun either.
Moral of the story - it's good for sort of a meet-up, not for 'breaking the ground' with your ideas :-)
And if you have to organize one - make sure there's food, water and some place to rest. Proper lighting which can be adjusted in different corners/parts of the hall(or the large room).
PS. And yes, keep it spacious and airy. Man is a messy animal :-\",
Your brain and whatever else on your body you're currently using to get code from brain to computer are surrounded by a lot things that are important to keep them running and talking to each other. Forget that, and they'll stop. Quickly, and painfully.
What -- you're against the idea of fingers and toes? Or did you mean "extremes"?
n. pl. ex·trem·i·ties
1. The outermost or farthest point or portion.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/extreme
Quote:
1. Most remote in any direction; outermost or farthest: the extreme edge of the field.
2. Being in or attaining the greatest or highest degree; very intense: extreme pleasure; extreme pain.
3. Extending far beyond the norm: an extreme conservative. See Synonyms at excessive.
4. Of the greatest severity; drastic: took extreme measures to conserve fuel.
But then again, I'm a believer in the shower school of epiphany. Have a sticky problem, take a shower, suddenly figure out solution to problem.
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.
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.
Yay Fun! (sigh)
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.
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.
Having peers and friends that you can share your experiences with has some health benefit even if the thing you’re doing is scientifically proven to end your life http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=social+benefits+of+smo....
edit: format
The op is absolutely right - we are constrained by our physical bodies and they require the proper fuel and rest in order to operate at peak efficiency. Just because you're using your brain instead of certain muscles, doesn't mean you can consume garbage. This isn't a bad on your comment as much as is it a comment on society as a whole. The whole Zuck bs legend has really damaged programming on multiple levels and it completely reject that ethos.
I've worked with devs that ate garbage all day, couldn't sleep, always came in late (they were non-drinkers too) and their job performance sucked. Their attention sucked. Their attitude sucked. Their code sucked. Needless to say they were all fired. But alas, this is a tale not about the voices of reason, but of bs movies and news headlines and even tho the op is critical (realistic?) of this, that opinion I'm sure is in the minority.
so a hackathon is only coding without socializing to get victory? Accept that people don't generally see hackaton as a competition but as a place to have fun.
> we are constrained by our physical bodies and they require the proper fuel and rest in order to operate at peak efficiency
yes, and a hackaton can't ask people to gather somewhere they don't necessarily live for days, weeks, etc...
What surprised me the most is how much time I needed alone. A lot of my best design decisions come to me when I'm holed up in the shower, and the hustle and bustle of a hackathon isn't anything close to that. I couldn't make any sound design decisions while really "at" the hackathon. I ended up repeating the same pattern: I'd hole up in a corner for a bit, or wander off for a walk. Then with a little focus, I could figure out what I was actually coding!
Coming "back" to the hackathon, however, was really important, as it kept my work ethic honest. I have a problem with premature optimization (not to just mention laziness), and the environment made me want to get back to work. You don't want to be the odd kid out just staring at browser tabs all day!
Sometimes, you gotta churn out code after you've made all the sexy design decisions, where the work is really just laborious idea-to-code elaboration. That's usually really hard for me to do, but a hackathon is a really good place for that sort of work.
It's a bonding experience.
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.
Hackathons give you an excuse to scratch an itch, learn something new and challenge yourself.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
Sounds familiar. I think there's basically two types of developers (and people): extroverts and introverts. Hackathons, 'social' coding, pair programming and whatnots are for the extroverted category; external stimulation (in the form of other people, the ability to bounce ideas off of them) is what stimulates them, while introverts don't need that to become stimulated; they can, in fact, be overstimulated and end up trying to filter out the excess of impulses, which is draining to them, not to mention distracting.
I've attended two hackathons. The first was for Open Government projects, and it was well-organized and low-pressure. I didn't pull an all-nighter, but I doubt anyone did. I attended the whole thing and really enjoyed myself.
The other was a much bigger affair with at least as many biz folk and designers as programmers. I was pitched on all kinds of half-baked ambitious ideas. It seemed like a big scheme to get programmers to build MVPs on spec. After the first night I didn't go back.
Something I like a lot that is much more sustainable is weekly "hack nights." Here in Portland we have many of these. Generally they meet at a pub, and there are maybe 10 people who show up, work on the side projects, and socialize. I've found those to be great: you meet people, you catch up, and you get a little done. And around 10 or 11 you go home.