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.
In Kansas City, I did two 24hr hackathons and one Startup Weekend over the course of a month. I have to say, after that experience I was not ready for anything that looked like a hackathon for weeks. It was a ton of work, and after each one I needed a day or more to recover. Hackathons are very draining.
I did, however, get to try out a bunch of ideas that had been sitting in my head becoming brain crack. Getting those ideas into the wild to see what people thought of them after even a little building out was really cool. Doing that kind of short-term building was what helped me to arrive at my current vision for a startup.
So there’s plusses and minuses. Like everything, use hackathons responsibly, in moderation.