Lessons From My First Hackathon
By: Adrien Miquel
Tags: Technology, Hackathons, Software Development, Startup, Programming

FPV — First Point of View

In the previous section, I’ve discussed how our team worked, what it is to co-work with colleagues you don’t know very much, at least regarding your field of skills.

In such a context, as you are part of an ephemeral team, you need to adapt your mindset.

Involvement

From my personal perspective, involvement is the main point. It’s not easy to get involved in the very first moment. From the moment the hackathon starts, lots of things happen in your brain:

You need to be super focused.

You must learn the contexts, the architecture, the processes in a small amount of time.

You need to work with people you don’t know, and you need to trust them.

In such a competition, leadership must not be taken but grows smoothly and softly. In my team, there was no leader: We trusted each other, and every decision was taken democratically. Of course, depending on the topic, a skilled dev led the team, but this position was not frozen.

I have to admit it: All through the first day, I did not feel committed to the project. There were many reasons. The subject was a big challenge, and the solutions I expected were not in line with our final goal. The task was bigger than I expected. Mainly, my teammates had understood the subject faster than I did.

Photo by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash

For all these reasons, I felt like a weight on my team. That’s why I decided to slap myself (virtually of course) and give the best of myself. I asked lots of questions, even though I felt silly or awkward. But the more I learned, the more I produced code and participated in this project.

Adapt your skills

One certainty when you start a hackathon is that you will face issues you never encountered till now and you will learn new skills (if the project’s not in your domain).

That’s why you need to be pragmatic and accept it. You must adapt your skills and use your cleverness to conceptualize.

Admitting you don’t know this or that programming language is the beginning. It’s necessary to accept learning new knowledge. This will lead to so many searches on the Web to solve silly problems such as casting, date manipulations, or string interpolations.

In a nutshell, it’s like starting over. But one thing is surprisingly strong in computer science: When you know the basics of programming and IT, you know how to handle every programming language and every concept, and you understand how things are designed.

You are the teacher

You learn new stuff, but you are also the teacher. Take the best of your knowledge to teach your teammates what you know and how it can be useful during the project.

Being proud enough to value your skills and provide solutions is important. It makes your pride stronger when one of your mates asks you something you have the answer to, right?

Of course, it will be more efficient if you tackle the task within your scope on your own. But it can be interesting to do it in pair programming. You will get another point of view, and it will train the teacher in you, too.

Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash

A hackathon is an exchange: Everyone shares their knowledge.

It’s connecting the knowledge of everyone.

It’s connecting all the team members.

In fact, it’s connecting knowledge and people.