| The best piece of advice that no one ever seems to give about hackathons: -- Hackathons may or may not be for you. Try it once. Don't stay the whole time if you don't want. If they aren't for you, don't go again. If they are, great, have an awesome time. -- For some reason, they're touted as this end-all be-all social event that if you don't go to YOU ARE MISSING OUT AND YOU WILL NEVER RECOVER. As many people posted here, the situation's combination of adrenaline and seratonin depletion gets people into some pretty seriously fucked mental states that causes odd group dynamics. Some will thrive on this. Some hate it. Case in point: I grew up in the rural midwest, but had computers. So computers are something I deal best with in situations with little to no people around. Hackathons are the opposite of that. Took me like, 2 attendances to realize that, and now I just avoid them. Hell, I even avoid career situations that put me in that environment, because I don't work well there. Not to say I haven't pulled some insanely stupid hours in my time, but I still even did most of those alone, and I'll continue to do so. |
Sounds familiar. I think there's basically two types of developers (and people): extroverts and introverts. Hackathons, 'social' coding, pair programming and whatnots are for the extroverted category; external stimulation (in the form of other people, the ability to bounce ideas off of them) is what stimulates them, while introverts don't need that to become stimulated; they can, in fact, be overstimulated and end up trying to filter out the excess of impulses, which is draining to them, not to mention distracting.