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Preventing Cheating At Hackathons
theodp writes "The fist rule of Hackathon Club is don't talk about Hackathon Club cheating. But ever-increasing stakes — the MHacks Hackathon at the Univ. of Michigan is offering over $30,000 in prizes — prompts Kevin Conley to broach the subject, suggesting it's time for some common-sense measures — including showing one's code or reducing prize money — to discourage Hackathon ruses, which can include pre-coding, faked live demos/videos, and the use of remote teammates."
my first FP?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Complaining people are hacking the rules of a hackathon is a supreme irony. You're taking people who thrive on the idea of bending and breaking rules and trying to shove them in boxes and demand they follow your rules. That's rich. You clearly haven't met many hackers.
Rather than bitching about "cheating", why not just issue the challenge and leave it at that. First one in wins, the end. No rules, no restrictions... and may the best person win. Or group. Or sentient AI. This is how hacking truly works -- it's all about finding novel solutions. It's about seeing how fast you can do it, how much skill you can bring to the table, how elegant the solution is... but at the end of the day, the only real judge is whether you passed the goal post. Few people anymore care about why or how... that's something to talk about after, as you bask in the glory of having done the impossible.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What about preventing hacking at cheatathons? If we could do that, Wall Street's servers would be very secure.
Some of the geeks at those hackathons have body builder physiques and are obvious users of anabolic steroid cocktails, which generally contain a mix of steroids, Diet Tab, and peanut M&M's.
Hacking in and of itself is cheating. So if you can cheat at cheating, you're doing it right -- you're smarter than the beast you're facing.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Some colleagues of mine recently participated in the NYC BigApps series of hackathons this spring. We went into our first one thinking you had to hack something together from nothing in 2-3 days after pitching your idea and attracting collaborators. In fact the CollabFinder site they set up to facilitate putting together a team "from scratch," and all the window dressing suggests that. But when you get to the "competition" it's mainly established teams that already have products that they're tweaking or putting some kind of new, minimal gloss on it. Plus all the palaver and marketing suggest that they're hoping to spur innovation that uses Open Data to make life better for New Yorkers. But at the final awards ceremony the game became clear--the judges were all Venture Capital guys, and the only apps that won were mobile apps that were Yelp/Facebook/Instagram clones, that could be capitalized by the VCs and flipped on unsuspecting 2nd round investors for some multiple, or a clone of something else that was already successful in the market. The app that took top prize in the Education category was a blatant rip-off of Scratch, the MIT-developed, open-source program that teaches kids how to program by treating code blocks like legos, and which is freely available on the Raspberry Pi that my kids play with.
So, it's a bit silly to talk about cheating at Hackathons when the entire essence of these events is really "Pitch-a-thons" so VCs can find new crap to pass off on suckers.
Call us when the judges are tech-savvy people who really know what they're talking about and what real innovation looks like. Then we can talk productively about cheating.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
If you allow video submissions as some kind of proof then your "hackathon" is broken and they "hacked" it.
There is no such thing as code that doesn't really on previously developed code. You used printf! You're out!
Somebody needs to read The Mythical Man Month. Adding more hackers to a late hacking project just makes it later. If they can stay organized and succeed in a larger group in a limited time frame then they have truly accomplished something even most software engineers cannot do.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
james t kirk hacked.. so it's ok, right?
Really, it took them that long to notice?
The people I know who are interested in hackathons are the biggest cheaters I know.
They get rewarded and punished just like Wall Street bankers. Though its generally not a lucrative the rewards still vastly out weigh the risks or even punishments for cheating.
Yeah, I see that going well..."trash the rules but please respect ours". "OK", said no hacker ever. Speaking of ruses...that's the very definition of these "Hackathons".
The idea that you give your labour for free on the off-chance you might get paid is called "working on spec" in the design industry.
Taking part in a hackathon for a good reason that you want to support is one thing, but 30 grand prize money is a bit different - it sounds like someone is using this as a way to crowd source innovative ideas - the ideas that they choose get paid, everyone else gives their time and effort for free. Surely we can think up a better and fairer model than this.
And no one ever beats Kobayashi Maru either. Oh, wait. Someone hacked that too?
If more hackers, IT workers, and people in general had it, this wouldn't be a problem.
How about asking for the winners to explain the code?
factor 966971: 966971
Why does everything being fun have to be turned into a competion where there's an incentive to cheat?
drivers and teams all looking for ways to cheat all the time.
Re:Integrity vs bending the rules or breaking them to get the job done.
Also some times unions can slow stuff down by working to rule.
What's a hackathon, and why would you want to cheat in one? The only ones I'm familiar with are OpenBSD hackathons where programmers gather, listen to humppa, and code. That's about it. Where's the possibility to cheat?
Most of the critical comments on the article do not understand the issue. Typical hackathorn is meant to build and demo a solution for a problem in a short time (folks comment about 'hacking', seriously do you know what hackathorn is about?). The problem is that the 'idea' is self identified - you pick your problem. If it is more run like a programming contest where participants do not know what the problem is ahead of time, and presented then it'll be more meaningful.
Except its Naruto, and no self-respecting nerd would be watching it.
If you were a nerd you'd have a Gundam, Yamato, or Macross reference.
Once I met a guy who basically lived off earnings from hackathons while trying to get his startup off the ground. He would spend time before hand finding libraries, writing wrappers, designing the solution, figuring out what to make, etc. He would even write tons of utility classes and sketch out pages beforehand. Then he'd show up, actually connect everything and blow everyone else away. I was surprised and then realized, hey, why not, if he's making good solutions who cares.
This whole thing is ridiculous.
The OP has a really good point. One might argue (as some have) that cheating is in the spirit of hacking. But it's not. "Hacking" doesn't mean cheating. It means "crafting" or "making" or "figuring out" or "doing" with often, but not always, a strong emphasis on complicated technological systems. So one should consider the goal of a Hackathon. If the goal is "to win it", then anything goes. But if the goal is "to encourage the creation of new neat or useful things", then face demos, etc., are pointless; such things prevent reaching that goal.
Real nerds watch Hikaru no Go.
Pre-coding? In my line of work, pre-coding is called being prepared.
Video demos? If the code is real, and pre-coded, who cares if the video was made yesterday. Saves on Bill Gates style embarrassments.
Remote teammates? Um. So all code everywhere is written by people in the same room?
It's not really hacking if you aren't pulling out all the stops, is it? IOW, there's no such thing as "cheating" when it comes to hacking.
--
www.nitemarecafe.com
I thought that said "preventing cheering at Hackathons" for a second
I blame those fraking cylons for all the cheating!!!!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
I think when this sort of event is for pride, then whatever, but when cash prizes get involved I can see why the people giving the prizes would want the rules followed. I feel like the obvious way to do this is to have each participant use software that does regular screen captures that can be reviewed by judges if they feel like there was anything goofy going on. I know that privacy is a concern, but in that case participants could feel free to turn it off while not working or at least commit to not producing any work in other screens.