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Comment by igul222 | Hacker News Reader

Serial hackathoner here. This misses the point of hackathons. A hackathon lets you dedicate time to building hacks you think are cool, learning new things, and meeting and making friends with other hackers. This is just programming quickly with little sleep.

Moreover, hackathoning as a lifestyle is a poor decision- you can only take so much pizza and caffeine every single weekend.

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Thanks for your insight from a serial hackatoner perspective. It`s true, there is no way we can make "commercial hackatons" day after day, that would miss the point. But to make from time to time fast MVP with client, it doesnt sound so bad IMO

That's not a hackathon; it's poor planning and obscene expectations. Once again a word has been coopted and loss all meaning by corporate interests.

There's a difference between a Hackathon and a barn-raiser which is what you're talking about.

This is a great point. I'm a serial Hackathoner too - I love going to Hackathons. But they're social events with code at the core and possibly you'll make something cool. Mostly you'll learn stuff and make new friends. The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon is the canonical example for me.

What you're talking about is not really a Hackathon. It's appropriating the word, and doing something that looks superficially similar - doing a binge of coding - but it's not the same thing and ultimately sounds counter-productive in the long run for me.

Just my 2c

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