YC Hackathon without writing code | Hacker News Reader

YC Hackathon without writing code

airdev.co

40 pointsahaller0719 comments

I don't throw language like this around a lot, but this was actually very inspiring to me.

I'm currently between jobs, and have a hard time figuring out what direction I want to go (and CAN go).

I see myself as a generalist with above-average it-competencies, but I'm not familiar enough with design to be a designer, nor skilled enough with programming to be a developer.

The past few months, I've been thinking that going the designer route might be the smarter career choice for me, as it is an area I have dabbled in before (both professionally and through education). Programming seems to hard a game to play catch-up in.

It seems like learning a visual framework like this would be an efficient way for a designer to create value for the business, both because it's fast, but also because it reduces the workload on the IT-team. I'm wondering if it would be a better idea to master a tool like this, and focus on design-related learning, that it is learning to program almost from scratch (even though it is the better choice in the long run i suppose).

Tons of tools like Webflow in this space - check out nocode.tech

There's a real need in the market for designers who can work better with developers and produce faster - tools like Zeplin.io are key here - Maybe thats where you position yourself?

Thank you for the heads up. I'll check those tools out.

I don't mean to sound elitist, but this isn't a Hackathon, its an idea-athon. Participants are limited to the small toolset of pre-built components provided to them, (Bubble in this case). The whole benefit of a hackathon is to think outside the box, but this actually encourages staying inside the box in order to produce a more polished product. You're getting a deep dive but completely missing any breadth.

In all fairness, even a large proportion of real hackathons tend to be light on code, heavy on presentation. Maybe it's a misnomer but it doesn't stop them from using the term.

True hackathons, where everyone's technical, in the same place, and miles of lines of code are written on no sleep, pizza, and Mountain Dew, are really hard to come by, because few talented people have the spare time to do them, and they don't typically pay all that well. Older hackers also tend to avoid them because they're more likely to have incompatible family obligations.

The terminology doesn't suit it, but it's widely used, like "Software Engineer".

I've seen entire businesses built on top of workflow SaaS products, and once the business is proven, the owner starts refactoring (hiring their own engineers) into their own codebase.

All that matters are the financials. If your experiment is validated with point and click tools, no shame in that. Prove it with one enormous Excel spreadsheet doing the heavy lifting if you have to. You are solving business problems, regardless of the tools you use.

It depends on the objective of the hackathon. YC's hackathons (I went to both this year) focus on creating a prototype that could be a startup. So the emphasis isn't so much on the technical programming but more the delivery and business case (kinda like a YC interview I imagine).

There are other hackathons I've been to that emphasize deeply diving into a technology or tool. They both have their place. Given that YC is in the business of identifying startups, I don't think it's a surprise that it leans towards an "idea-athon" like you said.

...but is a hackathon exclusively all-coding affair? I don't think so.

this is based on https://bubble.is/ - I just took the tour, it looks pretty neat for creating a quick prototype. I suspect I could get to market with a half working prototype faster with this, and then hire a team to develop a "proper" app later on. I'm going to try it out for my next app as I am getting a bit sick of getting started each time with create-react-app and running into dependencies etc. etc.

Nice. Looks like a competitor to Retool: https://tryretool.com/. (or perhaps the other way around, since Bubble predates Retool)

This is great. I've been to ~10 or so hackathons including both of the YC ones this year and this approach makes total sense. For the most part, the judges and audience don't care how you built something. They're more interested in the story behind the product including what sparked the idea, how you're equipped to tackle it, the market size, how you're going to get your first customers, etc.

I saw groups spin up AWS instances, throw up backends, and put on a frontend framework. It depends on the idea but for the most part, that's usually overkill. For web apps, I always static hardcode everything (yep, with jQuery) and then if time permits, productionize everything if it helps the demo be more slick.

This is awesome!! (disclaimer, I founded Bubble).

We've actually had a few teams at YC using Bubble, either to get in or after, once they were in the program. It's awesome as it's a great validation for our technology.

Thank you for doing the same in their hackathons!

Congrats man, we demoed a product at NYTM the same day as you guys (QuickMVP, now pivoted away from).

Been great to see your progress!

Thanks! Yeah I remember! I hope all is well.

I wrote up some reflections on participating in last week's YC Hackathon using Bubble, a visual programming platform. My AirDev cofounder and I didn't take home the prize, but it was a great chance to put our code-free development approach to the test and build a new product (Mailmitten) with Gmail and Stripe integrations in 12 hours.

First, I think you guys did an amazing job and should not only celebrate you achievement within the short period of time, but also plan to execute this further. I think it's a good nice-to-have.

Is Airdev Bubble, I am a bit confused?

> To explain: at AirDev, we build custom web applications for clients using Bubble, a powerful visual programming framework.

Bubble is like Unity for app / software developers and Airdev builds apps on top of it.

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