hackathons are the marathons to hack. Hack stands for building something useful or cool over given short period of time. hackathons are great fun as they challenge you to have continuous focus over long period of time. There will be added fun being up for whole night and hacking on things you like.
hackathon is an event where many developers get together to build something interesting in a short period of time like 24 hours. These event goes on for 24 hours without any break , many times stretching overnight. In this event team of people will be expected to build something around a given theme/topic. Most of the these events are free to attend and some even have perks like prizes or hiring for best hacks.
Benefits of hackathon
As you have limited timeline, hackathons are not meant for full fledged product/library development. It can be a great place to try out the ideas that you are interested in and prototype them fastly. This gives a great benefit of having feedback in very early stage of idea. You can build a prototype in 24 hours and ask people to give feedback.
The time in hackathon is very valuable, as you will be completely focused on the thing that you have to build. You will not be distracted by anything outside of the one you are building. It's great to have this kind of focus because often lot of nice products are the outcome out of such hackathons.
Normally all hackathons encourage people to work in teams. One obvious reason is to save time. In adiition, being in team forces you to be a team player.Each team member has a responsibility to contribute equally. If you don't have a team don't worry many hackathons even allow you to form team on spot.
At the end of hackathons, there is usually a series of demonstrations in which each group presents their results.It may not be the greatest thing in the world, but even if it's little good people will appreciate. It builds a good recognition around developer community which will be invaluable for your career.
Some hackathons may give you some perks like latest gadgets or some other coupons etc. Some may even give you job offers!. So participation in these events opens a great opportunity to win these perks.
Now,as you know the importance of hackathons, you may be interested in knowing different places where hackathons are conducted.
The following are few of resources you can checkout to get to know about hackathons in India.
Hackathons are the best place to build useful things in a short peroid of time. Attend whenever you get an opportunity.