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by mechanical_fish 5230 days ago
The point of hackathons is also the reason why this quote:

there will never be a Julia Child of software

rings false. Julia Child would cook stuff in front of you on TV so that you could watch how a real cook uses her tools, and hear the cook talk a bit about how she approaches her work.

Obviously the point isn't to taste the food - it's on TV. And obviously the TV show barely scratches the surface of Julia's work: It took her years of practice, apprenticeship with knowledgeable teachers, hundreds of tests of recipes, and so forth. But just because watching Julia can never be the same as being a chef doesn't mean her shows aren't useful.

The point of a hackathon is to get an up-close look at other people in your craft using their most familiar industrial-strength tools and techniques to build something a bit bigger than an academic example. Just shoulder-surfing a programmer using their tools well can be inspiring: Look at what DHH did for Textmate.

2 comments

Watching `notch` live-code is also very popular.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV-AFnCkRLY Making Metagun

[2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhQ70O1MiXc Making MiniCraft

[3]: http://notch.tumblr.com/

To reiterate your point, Ryan Bates of RailsCasts.com could be considered a Rails "Julia Child."