If you are a developer, and solving real life problems interests you and haven't been a part of HACKATHON, get up, pack yourself up, take the coffee and reach for the nearest HACKATHON around you.

Why you go there?

Being in HACKATHON is a great experience. You don't go there for winning as such, rather you go on and build the stuff ready in the targeted time. It's a team work rather than individual and if all the members are good in their fields you will come up with something great.

What you do there?

One would probably know this if you have visited a hackathon. For starters, the first gives you the feel where you stand and as you start going in more and more HACKATHONS, you go up the stairs.

It's not like you go in there and start building code. You visit in, analyse what you have to build, make a blueprint, design how it will look and set specific time limits for specific tasks. A HAVKATHON is at least 24 hours coding marathon and so you also need to decide how the work gets scheduled between your team partners so that all stay fresh and none feels the pressure. The coffee is essential part of HACKATHON and one can't neglect it. You will need coffee anyway on your journey of HACKATHON but beware of the limit. The food at HACKATHON might look delicious but take care of stomach you have to sit idle for hours.

How it feels?

If one team's successful with what he/she does it feels awesome. You might not even think about prize if you succeed in executing all that you had planned. A HACKATHON is more about satisfaction, experience, working under pressure and learning rather than just coding.

Beware, you might get addicted to HACKATHON.

Writing this answer was a great experience for me. It let me visit my HACKATHON memories again. Thanks for asking this one. Hope you enjoyed it, thanks a lot for reading, upvote it if you liked, downvote if you hated it for some reason, let me know in comments and follow for more answers like this.

I went to a Hackathon once (won too), essentially when you arrive, they lead you into a large room with a cluster of pc’s or laptops, you can bring your own computer too.

I saw one dude come in with a full gaming rig with two monitors and everything…

But yeah… you’ll have some experienced software developers introduce you to the competition and then present a few programming problems/projects to work on for the next 24 or 48 hours.

Once the introductions are over, the clock starts ticking and everyone begins to code!

Well actually you don’t start coding straight away, firstly you need to get into a team and start brainstorming ideas to solve a chosen problem, when you’ve made a plan, start researching ways to solve that problem, what languages will you use? what libraries will you need? etc…

It’s important that you don’t spend too long planning as you won’t have enough time to code your solution!

When it comes to coding, these will be the most stressful hours of your day, you’ll run into all sorts of bugs that will hold you back. The most important thing is to manage your team suitably so that everyone is working on a different task and you’re all not held back by the same problem.

Once the time is up, you must submit your solution regardless if it’s finished or not.

Also, did I forget to mention, you have to present your solution to everyone as well!

If it turns out that your solution stands out the most then you win!

With a few wins under my belt, a lot of people have asked me for tips and tricks and my possible hackathon "secrets." I'll try to keep it short and simple.

To give you a little background about me - I am in no way the best programmer and prior to my journey in hackathons, I actually never really made anything worth mentioning except a horse racing game on Turing (yeah, the oldest language in the book) but even then, that was in grade 11 and my buddy that sat beside me did basically 90% of the work. So you can imagine my confidence level when I made my way to my first hackathon...

Alright, I am a firm believer that one either LOVES hackathons or absolutely HATES it. I'm assuming you (the homie asking the question) loves it and wants to figure out how to win.

How to win Hackathons: 3 Easy Steps

...Sounds like those Buzzfeed articles eh aha

STEP 1: Know what YOU are GOOD at.

So I knew I wasn't the best coder/dev around - that was just a fact. I simply did not enjoy deving as much to really dive into it - especially in a hackathon (it's suppose to be fun). A "hack" basically has 2 parts; frontend and backend. I knew backend was too abstract for my liking and my expertise so I opt out of it and focused on frontend.

I decided that I was pretty good at design and frontend dev so I made that my expertise. A helpful tip would be to stick to ONE framework/language so you will run into less problems during the hack. I know people say hackathons is where you learn - that's true but you won't win (we are talking about winning here). I love talking so I also took the role as the "PM dude" and pitched majority of the time to the judges. So now that I have a strong sense of my role on a team, let's move on to step 2.

STEP 2: Pick your teammates WISELY.

This step is CRUCIAL. Make sure you pick your teammates ahead of time but if you don't have that luxury, don't worry - I've seen many teams win that formed during the hackathon. Try to test out the knowledge and personality of your potential teammates before settling down to assure the best possible combination.

Remember step 1 - know what you are good at? Well, here is where that helps step 2. When picking your teammates, pick people who don't have the same skills as you and pick those whom possess skills you DON'T have. I always try to have 2 backend guys to make sure that whatever we are doing, we can promise a database, proper server compatibility, and just an overall strong dev team. The last guy should be someone who is "decent" at everything - fast learner. He can bounce around to me (frontend) when needed and/or slide to the rescue when the backend needs a break.

I always aim to be the "weakest" dev guy on the team because then, I can not only learn from them but overall just have a high caliber team. This is not to say that you just have to find the smartest people - that's nonsense. I said weakest dev guy on the team but the best at everything else (hackathons derive heavily on code but winning depends on a lot of other things too). This means I have to hold my own when it comes to front end dev, design, and overall creativity.

Basically, do what you are good at and specialize in it. Everything else, "outsource" it to your teammates. Find teammates that are able to take that responsibility and master it.

Personality match is key too. If you don't like the person or find they are a bit too arrogant, homie don't commit. It's not worth it.

Step 3: Make something YOU will use.

Even though, if you're a good pitcher - you can sell anything, but having a good idea can make that process a lot easier. Make something you can use.

I have a rule for my hackathon ideas now. I have to hack something that I can leave on my phone (I usually hack android apps) so in other words, something I will use on the regular basis. This might not mean much to a lot of you but since I have only 16GB on my phone, storage is running short. It's always cool to make something that can potentially change the world.

Keep in mind that this is only coming from my perspective and have worked in my favour but is not guaranteed to work for everyone. The steps are pretty broad on purpose - you can define them anyway you want. Hackathons are really relative.

Hope it helps!

Danny

PS. Don't forget to send me a portion of your hackathon winnings.

A Hackathon is generally a very long coding event that happens for a day or two. Most of the hackathons are 36 hours long. There is no sleeping and only coding They are intense brainstorming and development sessions for people to come up with new ideas.

My first hackathon was Smart India Hackathon 2018 (SIH). It was one of the best things of my life. We had an amazing experience there coding and not sleeping for more than 36hrs straight.

It is a great place for learning new things. The grand finale happens in many nodal centres across India and there are usually around 70–80 teams in every centre.

Our centre was in Noida.

Our problem statement was Predictive Student Analysis. What we had to do was to help students decide their career by considering a lot of factors like their marks and their interests in their subjects and the teacher's feedback about their behaviour. Based on all these features we had to predict whether the student will pursue higher studies or go for a job or drop-out from the current course.

We were a team of six 2nd years with absolutely no idea of how to get started. Then we came to know that every team is supposed to have two mentors to guide you during the hackathon.

We got two amazing mentors who mentored us not only throughout the hackathon but even after and before that. We were so lucky to have such amazing mentors. They guided us in the right direction and taught us all that was necessary to build a product.

The 36hrs of hackathon was so much fun.

We coded and coded and coded. We also had a session of Zumba dance at 1 A.M in the morning.

During the Hackathon we also had to do three presentations based on which teams would be selected for the final round. Presenting our ideas to the judges and answering their questions gave us a lot of confidence and taught us how to put forth your ideas so that people understand what you have done.

We got selected for the final round and we had to give another presentation. In the final round we couldn't manage the time and so we couldn't present our whole product but we gave our best. We were the 2nd runner up and won a prize money of Rs 50,000 which is a big thing for us because we were only in our second year.

It was a proud moment for us. The hackathon taught me a lot of things about teamwork and how to present your ideas.

It was one of the best experiences of my life.

Yes, we code everything. From scratch.

In fact, I usually start a hackathon by spinning up a new Ubuntu server and installing Apache, MySQL, and PHP. I even attended a hackathon abroad once where I didn’t bring a laptop, and just bought one when I arrived. We start with a totally blank slate.

However…

The entire hackathon is about the 2-minute pitch. We code exactly what is needed for the demo - Nothing more, nothing less. If we are building an AI assistant from scratch, and in our demo we ask for “Stock price of TSLA” and “What’s the weather?,” we’re going to spend 24 hours building the best AI in the world at finding Tesla stock prices and local weather. If we’re not going to show how we log into the app, we usually won’t even bother to add a login form.

It’s the nature of the game. We have no choice but to start from scratch, because when you actually win a prize (with associated prize money), they are going to ask for access to your repository (GitHub) with timestamps of each commit.

What they’re not allowed to check is anything outside of your 2-minute demo, because that’s part of the challenge - anything you forget in those two minutes is not part of the juding decision, so we’re going to spend 24 hours making sure those two minutes are absolutely perfect

TL;DR: Yes, we do start from scratch and build some pretty impressive stuff in 24 sleepless hours, because we don’t waste time building anything that we don’t plan to show off to the judges.

Pro tip: We are one of the only teams that spends the last hour of the competition practicing our pitch instead of racing to finish the app. One hour before time’s up, we stop coding and open a Google doc to plan word for word what we’re going to say. When you only get 2 minutes, you want as many impressive facts as possible, and in 1 hour we can usually write and memorize a 2-minute speech. The result is a much, much better pitch than all of the teams that just improvise, which is ultimately worth 1/24th of your time.

I had participated in some 24hr gamathon in my college. I went to the workspace when free food and T-Shirts was being distributed. Rest of it I don't remember except that 3 other guys were just like me and only person did the whole of work. Every hackathon :)

Of course!!!

It's one of those experiences that don't feel as special after college.

Imagine not knowing what you are going to code or how you might even begin. At hackathons, you get to network with other people where you might be able to come up with an awesome idea to implement. Within a short period of time (usually < 48 hours) your team will have something to show for. It's breathtaking to be able to see all of your work culminate into one product in a burst of productivity. It's even more awesome when you and your team mesh well to create an atmosphere of excitement, hopefulness, and happiness. My first hackathon gave me all of these feelings and I have chased after them in every subsequent hackathon.

Go out there and give it a shot!

With a few other tech enthusiasts, we recently started a local tech community in Macedonia. We had our first hackathon last Saturday.

Our goal was to have a Couchsurfing-like platform ready by Monday.

Skopje had a huge scandal with the booking price hike for the UEFA Super Cup. We aimed to create a place where Macedonians can accommodate football fans for free for the big day.

On Monday morning, we had this -> Free Tourist Accommodation for Super Cup Skopje.

What could a junior get from this Hackathon?

1. It simulated a startup.
   Our team was very diverse - we had developers, marketeers, even a legal advisor. Everyone knew their responsibilities and worked together towards the bigger picture. On top of that, we had the deadline pressure and the hustle.
   
   We didn’t plan for it, yet it turned out to be a real life scenario where a junior can get prepared for the real thing. You don’t get that often.
2. Experience some fascinating teamwork.
   Each of us got into this project with incredible passion and enthusiasm. But what’s more, we all listened to what the others had to say, we had mutual understanding and made important decisions together.
   
   Juniors had the chance to experience great teamwork, the way it’s supposed to be.
3. Crisis management
   The platform went viral in the first couple of hours. It was covered by most of the national media stations and social media was flooded with info about it.
   
   Understandably, our server couldn’t take it. We weren’t ready for a response like this. We spent most of the Monday on crisis management - trying to get the server up and running ASAP.
   
   Even when working on real life projects, juniors hardly get the chance to face with problems caused by high traffic. This was an excellent learning opportunity.

I’m aware that not all hackathons are the same, but every single one of them brings at least these benefits:

1. Improved coding skills and experience
2. Improved communication skills and teamwork
3. Networking and meeting people with similar interests

Having won close to five hackathons last year, I would like to put forth tips which really helped me:

1. Decide your problem statement in accordance with the theme of the hackathon if it has one. Analyze similar products and come up with a MVP. Also think of ideas which will be really useful to the stakeholders in context.
2. Choose the tech stack wisely, however I personally don't recommend using the stack you are most comfortable with. Hackathons are a great way of hacking new technologies in a very safe environment and trying to use different technologies to solve problems also means you get exposure to a breadth of available options, which is a very important skill any software developer must have.
3. Choose the features you are planning to implement wisely. Hackathons having a smaller duration implies you have to showcase your idea and skills in the most appropriate way. This implies choosing user flows which are very relevant and should haves for the idea.
4. To be a good hacker also requires extra efforts outside the usual hackathon frame. Well I don't mean completing the solution before hand , but spiking on things which are very relevant to you. For instance you could think of developing libraries for some components, your personalized style sheets/ guides etc more as an open source contribution. This will also enhance your programming skills and make life interesting
5. Last but not the least presentation skills also matters. Have confidence in your idea and let that exude in your final presentations as well
6. Most importantly after the hackathon is over think of ways you can shape your raw ideas for the benefit of yourself/society.

Happy hacking :)

You absolutely have to bring your own computer. If you get a computer provided to you, it's gonna suck, it's not going to have any of what you need on it, and you'll spend more time figuring out an unfamiliar setup than you will programming. Just… bring your own. Trust me.

Other necessities learned of after attending way too many hackathons:

• noise cancelling headphones (this should be obvious)
• healthy snacks. Do not trust the food if they provide it. It's usually glorified candy, and you'll feel really sick by the end of the hack if you try living off it. I recommend making yourself and your team a small tray of veggies and dip, and bringing apples, oranges, and other healthy alternatives.
• A spare tshirt. You may not need it, but if you find yourself in a situation where your shirt is suddenly unacceptable, you'll want it.
• Comfortable shoes you can walk in. You should be getting up and walking regularly. It'll give your brain a break and stretch your legs.
• A sweatshirt. If the venue is chilly, you'll be miserable.
• Extra batteries for any devices you'll be using.
• Various charging cables
• If you have long hair, a brush and hair ties are always good ideas.
• Asprin

And for the love of god, wear comfortable clothes.

Because they’re a blast. They’re the exact thing a lot of developers got into the business for. Quickly building something with a group of people they enjoy working with, and working with the technology they want to work with. Several people I know pursued education in robotics only to end up writing excel macros for a living. These people embrace the opportunity to work on “Whatever they want” with “whomever they want” for “as long as they want”. It’s a nice change of pace to do things your way.

For myself, I go because I love the environment. I get most of my motivation from being around other developers and I get extremely pumped up just by being at a hackathon. I’ve also been to several as a mentor and not a participant.

For a lot of people, they’re an awesome version of a career fair. You get to work with a ton of other developers to build something cool and then your project is shown off to potential employers. A lot of business sponsor hackathons by providing food, locations, mentors, and technology. I’m sure 99% of them aren’t doing it just for fun. A lot of companies that are hiring developers will sponsor hackathons to establish a relationship with developers and possibly hire some of them too. If you see a company offering a prize for “robotics and AI” at a web based hackathon, they’re probably looking to hire some people interested and skilled in robotics and AI.

Hackathons should not charge money. It undermines the very reason to have one. I have been attending hacks around the world for over 15 years. I have also helped run many and mentored others. The first Hackathon I ever attended was secretly sponsored by Omidyar Network, later to find they secretly support many Open Source efforts as well

One cannot learn everything on the Internet, but Quora can help

Universities should also use hackathons for community engagement and hence not charge the Community.

There are cases to charge a small fee to ensure attendance, but at the same time the type of people who love hacks don't know what they are doing next week; much less in two months,

There are unique circumstances where I would consider paying outside the USA, however in Silicon Valley there is no reason to charge money in most cases. I would only pay in a situation where there are opportunities to learn a skill or interact on a targeted category.

I have preached to many government entrepreneur programs that instead of giving away cash that has never resulted in a company, sponsor events where people learn. USAID does exactly this outside the USA.

The primary premise to hold a Hack should be shared development for Educational and Economic good. There is significant cost/benefit to companies that recruit Developers and I have used them to see how people work with others and demonstrate their skills

I see Hacks in Europe that will only award winners based in Europe, this is plain discriminatory considering no hackathon in Silicon Valley would ever dare make such a Community sin. Others only allow local nationals to attend. We probably need some other word to describe these anti-open source and myopic events.

It is also a great opportunity to meet Seed Angel Venture Capital.

Large cash awards don't normally attract people who can't afford an airline ticket in the first place. A long set of rules tend to diminish the value as well.
Open sponsorship without restriction ! If you want to own a corrupt hackathon, pay for and plan the entire event yourself and be forward about underhanded tactics and a desire to eliminate innovation.

Hackathons increasingly turn away sponsors or swag to avoid competition with other sponsors. This too undermines the purpose of a hackathon in promoting ethics and openness. It is evil and unethical to turn away sponsors who come without rules, strings or conditions. It is unethical to discriminate on age or gender. It can be targeting at a an age range or sex, but it must be open to anyone. If you want to promote unethical practice and discrimination, take out a newspaper add. Please don't do this with a hackathon.

A problem here is I have never seen a hack where a judging panel ever seems to pick the best ideas or team. I have seen many hackathons that birthed completely different concepts from the networking in an event

Exceptional food and free beer absolutely attracts participants. (Not Pizza)

Product and swag giveaways work well, especially to offload last years products and marketing collateral

It should be sponsored and completely free for participants.
In a large number of circumstances, a hack is a Marketing Opportunity for companies, along with a Community good.

Today, many of the larger organizations off campus sponsored by Google charge a fee; however tickets are typically free for Students and Developers.

I attend hackathons mainly because of these reasons :

• Networking

This is a picture of me alongwith the Manchester United's Legend, CEO's of Fortune 500 companies and the finalists from different parts of the world who took the competition to a whole new level.
Amazing networking and best opportunity ever.

• Once in a lifetime opportunity

Who gets to code in the Old Trafford Stadium of Manchester?

The view from the window of hacking arena. Amazing isn’t it? I wouldn’t ask for anything better!

• Food

The one served during our stay for WalmartLab’s Hack in Heels hackathon. Unlimited snacks, energy drinks, chocolates, pizza and every kind of luxury in a single place. There is nothing more valuable than our idea, is what the sponsors believe in.

• Making memories

I mean, when can you hangout with your friends at night with unlimited food/drinks supply in an amazing place? Probably never!

• Meeting the best brains of the world

Our team with the other finalists at the hacking arena, Manchester Suite Level 2, Old Trafford Stadium, UK

• Explore places

A free tour around the Old Trafford Stadium? Manchester City tour? A trip to London? I would do anything to be in a hackathon event like that.

A picture of me and my friends at The Tower Bridge, London(Post-hackathon trip)

• Attendance benefits

Professor - Sushmitha, you’ve attendance shortage. I am afraid if you can take the semester exams.

Me - But sir, I had to attend *abc* hackathon, I’ve the certificates if that helps.

Professor - Ok

And that way, I get to bunk classes and still take the final exams.

Image credits : http://www.googleimages.com

• I get to build my resume

Who doesn’t want to be the proud owner of having three national level and two international level hackathons to their credit?

• Lastly, for an all-expenses-paid trip

For a wanderlust like me, hackathons in foreign countries mean much more than just coding. Free food, free accomodation, free travel and free city tours- are the best parts of any hackathon event.

Thank you for reading :)

The Winged Rhymester!

The anonymous answer covers many benefits already.

If I were to choose one main benefit, I would pick *learning*. Here's why:

• You will very likely challenge yourself to build something that works (at least well enough for the demo), in a tight schedule. You will have to learn something new by doing. Things will break and you will have to fix.
• You will learn ways of doing things from other members of your team as you work with them. You might learn some new tricks and tools.
• You will watch the demo of other teams and see how they built unimaginable things that cover a broad range of skills and technologies. That will give you a lot of insight and opportunities to learn about new cool things that other programmers and designers are using and/or exposition to new areas.
• You will be able understand your level of expertise by working with and seeing other smart folks at the hackathon building crazy things. It can be humbling and inspiring at the same time.

Have fun :)

Generally I feel the greatest value of doing a hackathon is the creative value. By running an event like this, you're giving your employees an excuse to be as creative as they can possibly be. Reduce the restrictions of their working day, and give them the freedom to explore ideas they've had sitting in an under-appreciated part of their brain, and you never know what could be created.

But even if nothing tangible comes out of it, you've triggered something in them which will shine through in their day-to-day work.

Something that will help them create better, more creative solutions to the problems they're trying to solve. Something which helps develop their confidence, their leadership skills and maybe even help them form better relationships within their company by working with people with whom they wouldn't normally work.

You're helping to develop skills in all kinds of areas for your employees, and all it takes is a single day away from their normal work. Small investment, potentially huge reward. And I haven't even mentioned the positive impact on morale.

A2A by 3 people (new record, woo!):

If you can sign up immediately, I would do so. Your background (object-oriented programming and data structures) is perfect to get the highest educational experience out of this hackathon. Additionally, there will likely be people from industry at the hackathon intending (to varying degrees) to recruit interns or future employees—after all, their companies are sponsoring the hackathon for a reason! You know enough to sound competent in conversations with these folks, and consequentially, you’ll probably learn something. As far as the actual hacking/product goes, you can safely reach either of these two goals:

(1) You probably won’t win the grand prize, but with a team of fellow newbies, you create an application that you can demo and put on your resume. Perhaps, for example, you decide to learn Android (based in Java) over 36 hours and create a simple application in that. This will be the best lesson you can get in Building Apps 101. You may find a judge/recruiter who’s interested in mentoring/hiring you.

(2) You want to win a grand prize in your first hackathon, and you know just enough to do the useful grunt-work for an advanced group of coders. Although this might be slightly less educational (and maybe less fun) for you, your skill-set is probably high-enough to talk your way onto an advanced team. Sometimes these groups will be less likely to ‘want to split the prize money’, but most groups are like me in that they assume “many hands make light work”. You will probably implement some simple algorithms in Python/Java that the super-coders will use in their various application-stacks. You can still put this on your resume, but you won’t be 100% sure what exactly is happening under-the-hood.

There is no minimum knowledge for hackathons, but elementary coursework in computer science (as you have) serves as a very good knowledge-floor. Show up, identify your goal (1 or 2 from above), and learn. During your first hackathon you’ll learn the soft-skills behind software development (planning, delegating, persevering, and presenting) that will help you both in your professional life and future hackathons. Additionally, the hard-skills you learn (languages/environments) only serve to lengthen the skills-section of your resume.

For you, there is no way for you to leave this hackathon worse-off than you were going in. Go for it!

I helped organize HackIllinois, so I am biased, but based on research I conducted at the event, there are different measures of success for each person. These are the best hackathons depending on what your goal is, organized by some of the main motivations for attending hackathons.

For Prestige—These hackathons are known for drawing the best of the best. Participants will likely be have several hackathons under their belt and are in it to win it. Just getting in is a big deal. Attending one of these have become something to highlight on the resume.

• PennApps
• HackMIT (Are becoming a bit more beginner-friendly, but still very competitive.)
• HackNY
• YC Hacks

For the Crowd—Where the bigger is better. These hackathons bring in 1000+ people and put them in a big stadium, making it easier to walk about and make connections. People feed off of each other's energy, but these hackathons often experience troubles with food/power/wifi due to scaling constraints.

• MHacks
• LAHacks
• HackTech

For Fun—These hackathons are more beginner-friendly, often offering support for training and mentorship. Less than 1000 participants, attendees tend to be more local to the area (within 500 miles). A great environment if you need to focus as these are some of the most smoothly run hackathons.

• HackIllinois
• BoilerMake
• BitCamp
• HackTX
• Hack@Brown

For Non-Programmers/Practice—A good way to dip your toe in the water and getting experience before going to a bigger hackathon.

• Design & Hack
• Startup Weekends Worldwide
• Company-sponsored hackathons at your University

There are some participants out there who will start from an empty file and code everything by themselves. They won’t use any frameworks, apis, or anything else that contains code written by anyone but themselves at the event.

These people are typically first time participants who have just started they CS education.

This is usually what I consider coding from scratch. You start with nothing and build everything by yourself.

Others will use frameworks, apis, and anything else that is free and open source software. This is completely allowed at hackathons and even required in some cases in order to be eligible for some prizes. (i.e. a company like PostMates may hold a competition for the best use of their APIs)

This is still considered to be coding from scratch by some people, and it is really the only way to be successful at a hackathon if you define success by if you won a prize or not.

Enjoying the Hackathon Experience is a daunting task and it's good of you to want to prepare. In order to succeed, you must be prepared for these key aspects of the hackathon: Product, Hygiene, and People. Let's discuss.

Hackathons are a great way to grow as a software engineer. You wind up over the course of 24 to 48 hours meeting loads of brilliant creative young minds and with them creating some of the least polished projects to change the world in the last decade. You know how to program, so now you want to know how to have a successful hackathon experience. Part of enjoying a hackathon is making a great product. Usually a web app. More on learning how to make a web app in a moment. Also important for enjoying a hackathon is hygiene. Minimally bring toothpaste and a toothbrush and deodorant. A change of cloths, at least socks, will make you a happy camper too. Everyone else is going to stink. It's sad but often true.

When you arrive at a hackathon still smelling fresh, start to meet people. Talk about hack ideas and hack technologies. Bring some ideas of your own and make up new ones throughout the day. Even bring up ridiculous ideas. Even if they're impossible to build or you wouldn't care to build them anyway, they can be fun to talk about and often spark new ideas in people. The mind of an engineer is a strange place.

Quality hacking is an unusual skill. In some ways it develops gradually over time with practice, e.g. the more you use emacs, the easier it gets. It is in this way like an art, and the more you do it the more you get to know the subtleties of your framework of choice. With practice you become a better hacker, much like one's writing ability improves with time and with writing. However, at times you will find your hacking ability improves substantially in a very short period of time. Learn a new technology, your first web framework for instance, and in the course of an hour the way you hack is changed forever. Learn a new unix command or discover an open source tool and *POOF* you can code like never before.

Pack your toothbrush yet? Do that before you continue reading.

Herein lies the heart of my answer to your question. You want to know how to take your knowledge of some programming languages and, in the course of 24 hours, produce something you can be proud of. As you will surely notice if you attend a hackathon, the most common way of doing this is building a web app.

Making a Web App.

If this is your goal, go into the hackathon with a working knowledge of web development. Get familiar with a web framework. Django seems like a good bet for you since you know Python. It's a robust web framework with a wide feature set and solid documentation. Follow the tutorials on Django's website: https://www.djangoproject.com/. You're welcome to get started with the template Django website I made. It's perfect as start code for a Hackathon and demonstrates a few important Django concepts like forms and working with databases.

Other popular choices include Flask (a lightweight framework for Python) and Ruby on Rails (the web framework in Ruby upon which Twitter regrets being built). Ryan Shea provides this guide to deploying Python Apps with Heroku, Flask & Twitter Bootstrap. Twitter Bootstrap is a selection of CSS and JavaScript that lets design-phobic engineers build decent looking websites without having to worry much about looks. You don't have to hate design to use Bootstrap, and it's definitely something worth looking into. The template website I link to uses it.

To learn more about web development take this class on Udacity taught by the creator of Reddit and Hipmunk. Web Development Course (CS253) This class recommends Google App Engine as the platform for your web app. Google App Engine is a great place to host a web app for a hackathon and is pretty easy to get started with. Other choices are Heroku and AppFog. The Django website template I link to runs on AppFog. Ryan Shea's tutorial (link) runs on Heroku. All three of these services- App Engine, Heroku, and AppFog- allow you to run your app for free on their servers, so they're good choices for making a website under the time constraints of a Hackathon.

So for your next steps: Decide what you want to learn. Don't know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript? Start there. Already half comfortable with those? Then choose a web framework, I recommend Django, and learn that. This experience will be best if you have someone you can incessantly pester with questions as you go. Barring access to a close and kind software engineer, there's always Quora. And Google is your friend, as is this Udacity course, as is a toothbrush. Best of luck and happy hacking.

Many are. The biggest group of open source contributors are Microsoft employees (2000+ of them). Followed by Google, Apple, Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. These companies have many thousands of paid open source developers.

In addition to those companies, thousands of companies using open source have engineers submitting contributions to help them solve their release goals.

Who is going to pay the other open source developers? There are a dozen ways to contribute to open source and some of them can be monetized. Open source developers are contributing their time because:

• They are interested in the subject area and want to learn more.
• They are hoping to get a job in the subject area
• They have a need for the software

All of these are selfish goals. That’s the great thing about open source - when everyone acts selfishly, everyone else benefits.

I would rather call it, why are hackathons so important to participate or a be part of?

Hackathons are an experience. They teach you quite a lot of things in a short time frame.

1. Can you come up with real-time problems that you see around you and try and solve them?
2. How quickly can you adapt and build stuff in about 24 hours?
3. Can you work with a team and collaborate?
4. Is your idea really good? Is it even worth solving that problem? Is that even a problem? You will get answers to all these questions and more, actually.
5. Meet so many likeminded individuals who participate at the hackathon. Understand what other teams or people work on, learn new technologies or at least kick start with new technologies.

This list can go on and on!

I recently helped organize a hackathon and I can tell you a couple of reasons why hackathons are great.

1. They are a great way to meet new people who are as interested in Computer Science as you. Remember that hackathons are voluntary while some CompSci classes aren’t so people who are there are usually very interested in the field.
2. You learn a lot. When I say a lot I really mean a lot. Hackathons throw you into a new environment of coding/learning where you are trying to create an application that has at least some functionality or does something you think is interesting or noteworthy. This is completely different than the classes you have taken before where you are asked to “create this data structure” or “try to create the most efficient algorithm to complete this task”. At hackathons you are creating something that, hopefully, you think is interesting and cool, and because of this you are bound to learn something new about the development process.
3. Great place to network. This follows from the meeting new people point I made earlier. It is very common (if not the norm) for tech companies to sponsor hackathons and actively look for recruits while there. In fact for many hackathons you submit a resume as part of your application and companies may even call you after the fact if they found you through your resume. These companies also have a physical presence in the hackathon (be it a table or some representatives) and you can talk with them and even set up interviews (not all companies do this) so its a great way to get an internship!
4. Lots of free stuff. So those companies that sponsored the event often provide other free stuff like t-shirts, frisbees, bags etc. Also your food for the weekend is paid for along with various snacks. I do not suggest you go to a hackathon for this reason alone, but hey its a perk for you if you do end up going.
5. Prizes. If you do well and create an app that the judges think is awesome you can win some pretty cool prizes. These range depending on the funding for the hackathons but the bigger hackathons usually have company sponsored prizes, along with general hackathon prizes so there is a lot to go around!

Hope this helps you decide to go to a hackathon!

Plan ahead. This cannot be overstated. It is against the spirit of the competition to do any actual coding ahead of time, but smart hackers who want to win do so by forming a team and figuring out what they want to do beforehand. This allows for two things: less time spent at the event coming up with an idea and a better idea to work on. The timeframe of a hackathon is very short, and you need to know what you will be working on beforehand to create an effective product. This leads to the second most important thing, the demo.

All hackathon ideas that win should be simple do demo and have high "wow" factor. These ideas are difficult to come up with, which is why knowing what you are doing beforehand is so helpful. Some of the best ways to impress people is to allow easy interaction with their own devices (so web app or twillo app - going through an app store is usually not going to work), or have demo devices for them to use.

Pro Tip: Take a look at the mini prizes from companies and try to go for one of them. If you optimize your app to try and win one of these, and work with the developers from the company (who will in turn be judging you for that prize) it is much more likely to win something.

I found the question from this comment.

I asked Hack Arizona 2016 organizers specifically about pre-existing code, and the rule that "open source libraries" are permitted. Theoretically, I could build any amount of functionality into an open source library, and then use it in my project. Their answer was, this isn't against the rule, but if the judge finds out, they won't give me a prize.

I also asked them about preparing the server. My project involves a DNS configuration which needs 72 hours to propagate globally, which means I must do this configuration in advance. The organizers approved this. I also tested the key components of my project such as IPv6 tunnels and worked with hosting provider to solve any issues. These all belong to server configuration, not coding, so I assume it's allowed as well.

The design document is written earlier. This is explicitly approved by the organizers. I wrote it with pen and paper, showed the paper version to my teammates, and scanned into the computer after the official start time for archival purpose.

I did copy a few lines of code from a previous project. That code is an algorithm to compute RFC1071 Internet checksum. Even if I write this from scratch, it won't be any different from the previous one, so there's no point in rewriting it.

Developers at all experience levels (student, junior, senior, management, etc) should attend hackathons!

Why?

1. They are fun and you will learn something new every time.
2. You will meet other developers thereby extending your network. Some even let you participate remotely.
3. You will learn about new technologies and services since many hackathons are focused on a particular company technology.
4. You will build up your developer stamina and prove you can go the distance. Some hackathons run non-stop over a couple of days.
5. Hackathons look great on your resume! Participation in them shows you are not afraid to jump in and learn something new with people you have never met before.

To get started:

Most tech conferences include company sponsored hackathons, but you can start searching for some here: Hackathon IO - Organize & Discover Hackathons - Hackathon.IO and here: Find all hackathons in one place.

Have fun!