Personally, the main reason I go to these hackathons is just to expose myself to a bigger network and places with stronger CS communities than the one at my really small liberal arts college just to see what I'm missing out on (which is a lot).It seems like a necessary evil and it has worked in a way since I've finally been able to get an internship interview from it.

Otherwise, I agree with his points. Not sleeping for 24+ hours really takes its toll, especially if you need to drive back to where you came from. Food is mostly junk, but this one other hackathon I went to had really well-made food, so there's that. They have been unrewarded since I always lose steam before I get to make an MVP and they do seem to be very commercialized and they're really trying to get groundbreaking stuff from us within a weekend, like the last hackathon had very specific prizes relating to using certain company's API as well has performing "health innovations".

I also like Brian's suggestions to provide more specific hackathons so that I know exactly what to expect from them. These events take up a huge portion of my weekends theI should be using on school, so it seems like a good idea to pick those which seem most useful at the time.