How to hack a hackathon

Be pragmatic. The dumbest rule that you can find in a Hackathon is: You should never arrive with previous work done. Break this rule and if someone complains show them this line of code.

createHackathonKillerApp();

This code should obviously call an open source library that contains your awesome code. Every project submitted to a hackathon has a previous work done. The C compiler is also a program you know? Code review at a hackathon is kind of tricky. And more when you don´t have an automated way to detect this kind of behavior. So hackathons have become in a circus to find the greatest facade of work. It does´t matter how hard you’ve worked into something but how much impact does your one line of code makes in the world. If you could measure how much part of the code in a hackathon is copy paste you would probably be disappointed. So be cinic. Start implementing your idea with time and sell it good.

Don’t waste time creating a hardcoded piece of art while you can use it to create awesome tools for yourself.

Wheel wallet was an all nighter team work in which we used bitcoin tools to build an awesome wallet and won the runner up prize at the MasterCard’s Masters of code Hackathon.

What do you get when you’ve got previously built hardware and tools? BAM! #1 First place at the Space Apps Challenge. The UNAM Mobile’s Fobos Mars is a facade project but it is a winner.

My code only contains API calls

That’s exactly the issue. There’s even a chapter in the Working effectively with legacy code book. Where the definition of legacy code is: Code that doesn’t have tests. Don’t just code with API calls. Be prepared. And remember: Being ready it’s better than being perfect.

The 2016 Angel hack was the best I’ve ever had. I lost this one. But I learned that a hackathon it’s about a bunch of guys convicing another bunch of guys to buy them as winners. And that it’s not an event where you want to always win. Sometimes you just want to meet new people and sometimes that’s even better than the prize. It’s not about the feasibility of the product. Because at this hackathon the winner was an investor command line tool that predicted the behavior of the stock market. Something that is imposible to do at one night. That’s something not feasable. They were cinic. They won. And they deserved it.

Who is responsible of this behavior?

The organizers. They don’t test neither review the code nor the idea. It’s as easy as that. Everyone can come up and cheat. Everyone can come up and hack your hackathon.