title: Hackathon
tags: rant, hackathon, how, tip, protip, programming, development, software, random
comments: true
date: 2015-01-22 01:36:28+00:00

Hackathons are great! Some people are natural hackers, and they seem to grasp the idea fairly quickly, and do wonders on their first few attempts... Not me.

I've attended, I think, 3 hackathons in the past that I just did miserably in. It seemed easy at first when I thought about it, but the real deal is something else, man.

It took me three failed hackathon to actually succeed at one. The most recent and fourth hackathon I participated in, I actually built something cool and people were excited about our project. What is the secret to this?

I'll try to summarize in a few points:

+ __Come prepared__: You must have your idea ready. Also, make sure your development tools are all good to go.
+ __Build Incrementally__: Never spend time focusing on one part of your project. Spread the energy throughout, then iterate.
+ __Ditch Good Practice__: Use singletons, static variables, and even gotos if you have to. Just get that shit done.

Most importantly, though, is __to have a goal__. The last hackathon was productive because I had a clear goal of learning how to make an Oculus game in less than 24 hours, and [my teammate](http://surajms.com) had a goal to not fail again, lol. We kept our goals in hindsight, and nothing was there to stop us.

## Conclusion

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