My First Hackathon: Jason Tuhy — Director of Volunteers
I first heard about hackathons when my friend started to attended them during my sophomore year of high school. My friend absolutely loved attending these events and tried to convince me to go with him, but I didn’t understand why someone would want to go. I thought, “What? Why would I want to go somewhere, stay up for 24 hours and code the entire time?” At that point in my CS journey I had only taken 2 years of programming at my high school. One year being an introduction to programming in python and the other being AP Computer Science which was taught in Java. Besides these 2 years however I did not know very much programming at all and I thought that I would not know enough to attend a hackathon. I could not have been more wrong.
Being the stubborn person I am, I refused to attend a hackathon my entire sophomore year. Thankfully, I eventually gave in and attended my first hackathon during the beginning of my junior year, which was HackRU Fall 2013. During that hackathon, my friends and I attempted to make an android app that was an image sharer which would allow you to see images that were posted within a certain radius around you. Think Instagram, but with less features and more frustrating to use (in fact our app, Frames, was so bad, that every time you refreshed the app it would reload all the images. My friend depleted his entire data plan over the course of these 24 hours). We were all fairly familiar with Java, but had very little experience with android so it was quite the task. Overall, despite Frames’ long list of issues, my time at HackRU was one of the most entertaining and educational weekends of my life.
My biggest takeaway from my first hackathon was to really take advantage of the things that they have to offer. Really pay attention to the API demos at the beginning and try to integrate them into your app. That will force you to gain experience with new things which is how you can grow as a developer.
Another great resource at hackathons are the mentors. These are incredibly knowledgeable people who volunteer their time just to help you out with your hacks and everyone should take advantage of their knowledge. At my first hackathon there is no way that our app would ever have been finished without the help of the mentors around us. If you are unsure whether you want to attend HackRU or not, the only advice I can offer you is to come try it out. I am sure that you will have an amazing experience.
I cannot wait for this semester’s HackRU and I am excited for all the hacks you guys will come up with!
Jason Tuhy is the Director of Volunteers for HackRU XII. He is a sophomore at Rutgers University, majoring in computer science and math. He lived in Australia for three years as a kid.
