I can not understand this at all. Can someone please explain this strange cultural phenomenon?
I'm serious. What could possibly make someone work on anything for 30 hours straight (with only one hour break)? I couldn't imagine myself spending 30 hours straight on any activity voluntarily. What about the health implications?
This reminds me of gamers dying of cardiac arrest after spending days on end in front of a computer.
We built a credential in 30 hrs that can give us more recognition for our startup than we potentially would have gotten for months or more of normal work. We're not celebrity founders, we don't have press connections, and we don't know investors. We came in as nobodies on Saturday, and pitched to Dave McClure, Naval, et al on Monday. Now, we have a great hook we can use to start any conversation about our company.
As far as health, yeah – kind of sucks to be taken out of commission for a few days, but a very small sacrifice and completely worth it in our minds.
> We built a credential in 30 hrs that can give us more recognition for our startup than we potentially would have gotten for months or more of normal work
The importance of this can't be stressed enough. Winning the Facebook Hackathon within a month of starting university was the catalyst to applying to and being accepted at a YC company for the summer as well as a ticket through the interview processes at Google, et al.
More importantly, it also forged connections with local investors and angels that would have taken years to create had I gone through the normal routes, and that wasn't even a large event, so I can only imagine what an AngelHack placing would do
Hehe, this is really true: I got an internship immediately from one of the companies sponsoring a hackathon I got second place at. People at other companies I talked to also liked it.
And, beyond that, it was some of the most fun I've had, for the longest time in a single go. Even if I didn't place, it would have been great.
I've done some hackathons and the answer is simple: it's really fun. Building something cool from scratch in one sitting is very enjoyable.
I don't think there are any serious health implication to staying up for ~30 hours, especially if you take short naps once in a while. This is actually gentler than spending about the same time awake in planes and airports, and travelling doesn't seem very strange, does it? If you only do this once in a while, it shouldn't be an issue at all.
> What could possibly make someone work on anything for 30 hours straight (with only one hour break)?
You're asking for an objective explanation of why people find things subjectively rewarding.
Why do people climb Mount Everest? Why do they run marathons? I don't want to do either of those things, and both are probably more dangerous than a 30 hour video-gaming session.
In my case, it was 12 hours for 3 iPads. (1/team member)
It was fun. Got in a real zone for a while. Built something cool. Got to greenfield hack for 12 hours without dealing with any legacy code. There was a reasonable chance at winning. And all the people who would have been playing werewolf were hacking, so what else would I do?
There are no or very few restrictions, you can build what you want, you learn a lot, you meet new people or build stronger relationships with the ones you do know, and you may end up with something very cool.
There's more to it than this, but it comes down to it being fun and rewarding.
Also want to add that Firebase should definitely do a write-up about their Angelhack sponsorship. We were so impressed by the way that they helped and encouraged everyone there. Andrew, the CEO was giving us advice at 4AM on a Sunday morning! Seriously, these guys are amazing--basically, anytime anyone is building anything real-time, I'm going to refer them to Firebase.
The Hackathon.io website also used utilized Firebase for all the messaging. We really can't stress enough how awesome that team is and how useful their tech is! We didn't do justice to the potential of the system, but the parts we touched were simply a developer's dream! Looking forward to rebuilding the messaging with a deeper integration (and timestamps, sorry everybody!) and some useful goodies
I've been wondering about why people do this sort of thing, so thanks for answering that.
I found it curious that Startupbus, which I believe is going on right now, seems to never have had much traction on HN, and when it did, it appeared to be astroturf. It seems like an unforgettable and intense experience, but combining a hackathon with cabin fever and gross bathrooms just doesn't seem like a lot of fun.
I was also on the StartupBus last year and it was the best hackathon I have ever done. I did not take my first nap until 52 hours into it. Had a blast, met a lot of great people, and gained a lot of press http://kennedysgarage.com/projects/lemonade-stand
In addition to building something cool and credible, you got to show that you could handle a lot of challenges (little to no internet connectivity, distractions, etc).
However, in our case we weren't allowed to use the bathroom on the bus.
1) How does this get around the Craigslist TOS (if it does at all)? Not being accusatory -- and I doubt this kind of use would be draining on CL -- just interested if that was at all an issue to deal with?
2) It's encouraging to hear that you used Rails 3.2's ActiveStore on a production app. That's a cool feature but I was wondering if it was stable enough to use.
re 1), we use the 3taps API (http://3taps.com/) to pull listing data. We had to roll our own login system for grabbing a user's listings, which might run afoul of CL's TOS. Will definitely have to explore options for the long-term.
Hah, they mentioned the Firebase guys. They're awesome - been using them for a while now doing 'live' things. Good to hear hackathons are digging firebase.
Whoops, I need to check the logs! Thanks for the heads-up. We do plan to keep SnapStore.me running. Currently deciding how best to divide our time between our two projects.
>Off topic: Is there a way of detecting which effect a site is experiencing?
I'm not familiar with a way. Some ideas:
* Have Alexa/etc. report real time data including referrers. This requires that work is done by one of the few companies that gets this data.
* Create a site that just monitors which links show up on a manually created list of popular URLs. This would only be an estimate, though since it wouldn't view actual traffic.
* Have people who run sites that might get killed include some code that checks the logs/analytics and reports heavy activity. This is problematic since it requires each site in question to prepare for getting lots of traffic.
I'm serious. What could possibly make someone work on anything for 30 hours straight (with only one hour break)? I couldn't imagine myself spending 30 hours straight on any activity voluntarily. What about the health implications?
This reminds me of gamers dying of cardiac arrest after spending days on end in front of a computer.