HackSC: The how and why of hacking at a hackathon

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HACK ON! ! by pamela fox ! @pamelafox @khanacademy

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USC 3D Animation Linguistics Computer Science

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COMPUTER SCIENCE + LINGUISTICS

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COMPUTER SCIENCE + ANIMATION

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COMPUTER SCIENCE + GAMES

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SIDE PROJECTS…

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“DEVELOPER ADVOCATE”

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20% TIME

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Japan Australia Singapore France Brazil Philippines

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THE HACKING YEAR

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http://life.khanacademy.org/

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http://life.khanacademy.org/

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WHY HACK?

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WIN PRIZES

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WIN PRIZES??

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WIN PRIZES

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BUILD SOMETHING

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BUT WHAT?

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Something BIG! SOMETHING BIG!

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NO.

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But big in its own way. SOMETHING SMALL! Source: http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ringai/3975402556/sizes/m/in/photostream/

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HOW?

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BRAINSTORM

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BRAINSTORM PICK 1 IDEA

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BRAINSTORM PICK 1 IDEA PICK 1 FEATURE

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BRAINSTORM PICK 1 IDEA PICK 1 FEATURE FAKE THE REST

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ONCE YOU’VE “AGREED” ON THE IDEA… PROTOTYPE DELEGATE & HACK CRAFT YOUR PITCH commit often!

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PROTOTYPING

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PAPER PROTOTYPING

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WIREFRAMES mybalsamiq.com/signup

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HACKING

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COMMIT EARLY, COMMIT OFTEN https://help.github.com/articles/create-a-repo/

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PICK YOUR STACK tinyurl.com/pickyourstack

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THE FRONTEND

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THE BACKEND Language + Framework + DB + Host Flask/Django Play / JSP Zend / Drupal Python Java PHP MySQL MongoDB BigTable CouchDB Azure GAE Heroku JavaScript Node / Express

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BACKEND-LESS FRONTEND

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PITCHING

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ALWAYS BE READY TO PITCH. https://github.com/mimming/pitch-like-a-hacker/blob/master/index.html PICK 1-2 PEOPLE TO JUST WORK ON THE PITCH, AN HOUR BEFORE. DON’T ASSUME ANYTHING WILL WORK.

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https://github.com/mimming/pitch-like-a-hacker/blob/master/index.html BE ENGAGING: MAKE IT INTERACTIVE OR TELL A STORY. PITCH SCRIPT 1. Say your group name 2. State the problem you solved 3. A one sentence description of your solution 4. Demo the stuff that works, dance around the pictures. 5. Talk about the technologies you used in descending order of best prizes

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PROTOTYPE DELEGATE & HACK CRAFT YOUR PITCH commit often! CELEBRATE!

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DON’T FORGET

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BUILD UP YOUR RESUME

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IF WE’RE HIRING YOU TO CODE, WE WANT TO SEE THAT YOU CAN CODE. Don’t show me this: Pamela Fox! ! USC 2002-2006, B.S. in Computer Science! Courses taken: Algorithms, Databases, Data structures, Web development, Brain Theory, Computer graphics! ! Awarded Merit Research Scholarship

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IF WE’RE HIRING YOU TO CODE, WE WANT TO SEE THAT YOU CAN CODE. Show me this: Pamela Fox! ! USC 2002-2006, B.S. in Computer Science! GPA: 3.8! ! Projects: * SimilarBooks: A visualization of books related to a user-entered book, using the Amazon Similarity API, Python, and a BFS approach.! * PhotoMunchrs: Based on NumberMunchers, with photos pulled from the Flickr API. Provides a Python REST API built on App Engine to report game statistics and provide munch scores.

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SHOW US YOUR CODE! Your name! ! USC 2011-2015, B.S. in Computer Science! ! Projects: * AwesomeHack: An app that does X and Y. Built on the A and B technologies. Developed during HackSC 2014 and continued after. Code available at github.com/yourname/awesomehack!

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LEARN TO WORK WITH PEOPLE

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CODING? powtac / Flickr

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CODING! (IN INDUSTRY/OSS) http://www.slideshare.net/wuzziwug/engineering-culture * Understanding existing code * Planning “your” code * Writing consistent code * Testing “your” code * Improving “your” code * Releasing “your” code * Monitoring “your” code * Learning from bad code