Over the weekend, I had one the best, and the most memorable time in the last 2 years of my college journey. It probably just an ordinary weekend for most, but for someone like me, it is something I don’t experience often. I and 4 others, 2 of them I consider to be my very close friends here in the middle of Pennsylvania, went to HackPSU, a Hackathon sponsored by MLH at Penn State.



I have been to two Hackathon prior to this, and while I was in San Francisco, Hackathon scene was really big, but I was never really into it. This Hackathon wasn’t any different, it was what I expected it to be - a 24 hours where you get to eat quite unhealthy, drink tons of soda, stay up all night and write codes that you are most likely never going to touch again. There were often more “idea” (proclaimed “Business”) people than there are programmers, so a lot of time you are going to team up with people who either don’t write any code or barely write any code at all. That was my case the last two times, I had a team of 5 both time, and I most if not all of the code. I was stressed, I worked so hard to crank out code, hacked my way through problems, and it was all for nothing at the end since obviously, I didn’t win nor get anything for the effort I putted in. It wasn’t enjoyable, and if it wasn’t for the free foods and the fact that I got on IBM’s radar, I would have regretted going deeply.


I wasn’t planning on going to HackPSU again this time. I currently live in Lehigh Valley, so unless I get funding for travel from Penn State Lehigh Valley, I wasn’t going to waste $100 on Greyhound just go get some free food. The concept of a Hackathon is usually very scary to most students, they think “Oh is this like a hacking, like cyber security firewall breaking kind of thing?” and if I explain to them that this is just a 24 hours build-an-app thing they proceed to say “Oh I don’t think I can do that, programming is hard. Sorry not sorry not interested”. Even if I explain to them that it wasn’t a programming things (a lot of people there can’t code), and that you don’t even have to participate, you can go for the workshop, it didn’t change their mind. I wasn’t going to ask for funding if I couldn’t find anyone who are interested in going. And since I wasn’t planning on going anyway, it didn’t matter to me whether people were interested or not.



But to my surprised, 2 of my really close friends, 2 girls too, mind you, decided they wanted to go. On top of that, we were able to find another guy who wanted to go and someone else to drive us. My friends weren’t experienced with programming, they have never built any programming project outside of class, and their only experienced were the two intro to C++ classes they have from the IST major. They said they were going to go for the workshops, and I playfully told them that “Well, in that case, I will throw in your very own Jackie-hosted-workshop as a bonus”. And that exactly what we did, we didn’t participate, we went just for the workshop, we didn’t write any code other than the one from the workshop, but it was the best Hackathon I ever went to, how could this be?


Well, I gave it a lot of thoughts, and these are the reason I came up with:


1. Don't go to code.


Hackathon isn’t a programming thing, it might appear to be one, but at its core, it is a social thing. If you go expecting to build the coolest app or win some prizes, you are going to be disappointed. Programming in a 24 hours environment, to me at least, is very stressful, the code you write more than often WILL be bad, hacky and probably unreadable. Statistically too, projects you wrote at a Hackathon won’t be looked at again, so unless you won and have a VC fund you, yeah you probably won’t make anything useful.


If you truly want to code, why not just do it on your own? Set aside sometime on your weekend, work at your own pace, build something you actually care about. Even if you have a team at a Hackathon, there is no guarantee that your team will work on your on idea. Not staying up all 24 hours to crank out code mean that your code WILL be better written, and you will thank yourself later down the road if you look at it 6 months from now to improve on it, thinking “Hey that some beautiful piece of code!”


2. Go to learn code (or anything, really)


The last two times I was at a Hackathon, I just locked myself in a room and spew out code like I was doing it for my life. It was very stressful, I didn’t learn anything new and I can guarantee you I didn’t become a better programmer because of it.


Instead, why not go to a Hackathon for a workshop? This time around I went for the Google’s Interview Prep workshop, Apple’s App Development, Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing and so on. I actually felt like I learned something for the time I spent there, and I actually walk out feeling inspired, something I didn’t feel at all the last two time.


3. Be social


Again, in my opinion, Hackathon is a social thing. Go if you want to meet new people, go if you want to workshop. Hackathons are usually filled with sponsor looking to get students interested in applying to their companies. Or you know, just go with your friends, like I did.



This was what made this Hackathon so great for me, I and my two friends went together. We shared a hotel room, play Mario Kart in the car, played Just Dance late at night, walked through below freezing weather to a Sleetz to get a toothbrush, played giant Jenga, chess, and this list goes on. Not a single moment of my time felt wasted, and I was very happy to be there.


4. Last, but not least: Don't think too hard about it.


Don’t take it serious. Don’t be Jackie. I took it too serious the last two times, I paid dearly for it. Hackathon should be a fun even, go be social, enjoy the free foods, play games they provided, heck this HackPSU we have a Rocket League tournament and a Fortnight tournament, and they provided giant chess set and giant block for Jenga. Go and learn something new, go to workshops, go see what out there. We don’t have any ramen place in Lehigh Valley, so I took my two friends to a ramen place at University Park, and they loved it.



Hackathon is what you make of it. Don’t feel pressure if you don’t want to go, but keep in mind it doesn’t have to be programming.


Have fun Hacking!