[zestyping]

The most serious problem with hackathons is that many of them create the misconception that anyone can build a product in a weekend. Most cannot.

A few can build a great prototype; an even smaller miniscule few can build a product. But most hackathon participants produce either no code at all or terrible code.

This is fine if all you want is to make friends or build working relationships or make a throwaway prototype.

But, if you want to make a lasting code contribution, it's almost certainly got to be a small feature or bugfix on an established project, for which the problem definition, skill set required, and relevant parts of the codebase were documented in some detail before the hackathon. Very few hackathons have this level of preparation.

Better preparation or better expectation-setting -- that's what is needed.

[raylu]

I don't think anybody expects to build a great product during just the hackathon and I'm not sure where you got this impression.