Today, I will be attending a hackathon. I look forward to this time every year because I love this hackathon. I get to spend a lot of time with my friends and I have an excuse to work on something new. Plus, there's always a lot of good food to eat.
But I should be excited about it for more than that.
See, this particular hackathon has recently been co-opted by the College of Business at my university. Since that has happened, the entire event is just a little sadder every time it comes around.
For one thing, the categories have gotten far dumber. Three years ago, in 2022, there was a fairly standard grouping of categories including Hardware, Data Analytics, and Game Dev. It wasn't a perfect affair — the Health and Fitness category was poorly attended and had to be merged with the General category for scoring and was removed the next year — but at least every category made sense.
Last year, a "business solutions" category was introduced where "no technical experience" was required. This was a strange addition to the standard five, but I understand the intention of this was to make the hackathon more inclusive, and I do support that goal. I will also say that a 24-hour event to come up with business ideas is not completely without merit, but I also contend that it's not a hackathon anymore. It's a separate event that targets a separate group and only encourages a toxic mindset which is prevalent in the minds of many business majors where they just need to come up with An Idea™, find a programmer to make it for them, and reap all the money from the whole affair.
This year, the categories are all over the place. Cybersecurity, Game Dev, Hardware, and AI/ML are familiar. But the Data Analytics category has seemingly been split into two: "Datathon" and "Sports Analytics", the latter likely only existing because of a sponsorship from the University athletics department.
The business solutions category is gone this year. In its place is "Hack the Planet" — but good luck finding anyone who could explain what that entails because the explanations of these categories have been given less detail than ever before, devolving into little more than word salad.
Hackathon categories exist to inspire further creativity, but these new categories do little to help with that, in no small part because participants need to understand what kinds of submissions will be accepted.
There has also been a greater emphasis on networking with companies over the past few years. Networking has always been a part of hackathons, but if it overtakes the creative aspect, it becomes a job fair. Again, not a meritless concept, but it's not a hackathon.
There's also the matter of the entrance fee, which I understand the existence of as a way to ensure that people don't sign up and then fail to show up. But the fee gets more expensive every year despite the event receiving even more sponsorships each year. It's possible that this is a necessary evil to keep the hackathon going, but nothing about the event feels like it has become substantially more expensive each year. In my opinion, it feels like nothing more than a transparent attempt to scrape even more money from an event that isn't in danger of going away.
All of this feeds back to the fact that the event is run by business majors, people who don't understand why programmers like to attend hackathons in the first place. It is yet another facet of the life of a programmer where we are expected to go to work and create for the benefit of someone who does not understand us.
The fact of the matter is that most programmers and engineers will be working for people who focus on business for most of their professional lives. Hackathons, game jams, and other gatherings like them are supposed to be a clean break from "the industry" where your tasks are mandated by someone who wants to use you as a vehicle to make money. Instead, for a little while, you can manage yourself and just make a project that you care about.
Admittedly, there's nothing preventing you from still treating it like an opportunity to just hang out with friends and eat high-calorie food and get minimal sleep and make something interesting only to you. The underlying attitude behind the event may have changed, but it need not change your attitude toward it. You don't have to play the game where you make something that neatly fits into one of their categories and would impress a business major all to get a prize.
Of course, that's not a remedy. The event would obviously be a better experience and much more reasonably run if it were still under the control of those who are in its target demographic.
It is likely too late for this hackathon. I expect it will simply get worse year over year due to the ongoing meddling. Which is why I now beseech you, dear reader, if you are in a position of control over a local hackathon or similar event, keep control in the hands of the nerds. Don't let your hackathon become just another way for the people who already control the lives of many programmers to exert even more control over them.