Hackathons are about making and finishing something. That’s the whole premise: Instead of spending months working on a personal project that goes nowhere, give yourself a time constraint so you’re forced to finish something. Now you have something concrete to put on your portfolio (even if it’s still a proof-of-concept) - plus you’ve probably learned a lot.
Setting up config files for a tool is not making something. That’s like if I spent hours setting up my IDE, build processes, a CI/CD pipeline, and even unit tests. That might be cool and enhance my productivity down the line. But I still haven’t made anything.
> Setting up config files for a tool is not making something.
This is like complaining if someone used Unity at a game making hackathon. “They didn’t really bill anything they just configured an existing solution!”. At the core hacking hackathons are about what you deliver not the effort put into it. It’s crazy how people want to turn it into a purity question. People feel threatened because AI has removed a barrier for those whiners not as good at programming as they see themselves. But hackathons where never won by the rules of people who go “I am going to build my own game engine because using existing tools and libraries feels like cheating!”
Setting up config files for a tool is not making something. That’s like if I spent hours setting up my IDE, build processes, a CI/CD pipeline, and even unit tests. That might be cool and enhance my productivity down the line. But I still haven’t made anything.