This page is part of my digital garden.

This page might be unfinished or have typos. These pages are meant as part of a public living notebook to be edited over time. For more, visit the page explaining the concept of a digital garden.

Hacker Sunday

Learn more about Hacker Sundae at hackersundae.com

Hackathons:

  • Often exclude those who are getting started because they fear
    1. They won’t make anything “cool”
    2. They “don’t know anything”; so they can’t contribute.
  • Topics are often focused on some myopic thing a sponsor wants instead of purely “what’s the coolest thing you can make?”
  • The time limits and conditions are horrible
    • Often working in non-ergonomic seats, tables, and positions.
    • Eating and drinking bad food
    • Not sleeping or sleeping on floors/couches and then going back to coding

All of that is… not needed.

If you want to kill your body/mind and push yourself in a hackathon then go for it, but there should be an alternative: Hacker Sunday.

Hacker Sunday Link to heading

The rules of Hacker Sunday:

  1. Anyone can come and join. You only need to hack.
  2. Beginners accepted. Asking questions and learning is Hacking.
  3. Be comfortable. Hack from your bed. From your desk.
  4. Do it every week. Make it a habit. Build something that includes breaks.
  5. Do whatever you want! Worked on something last week? Work on it some more… or do something totally different.

Hacker Sunday is meant to be a relaxed creative and inspirational event that happens every week on Sundays.

Pre-pandemic it would involve getting together at someone’s house or a Starbucks. Today it’s getting together on a Discord voice channel.

Everyone is allowed and experience doesn’t matter. Make whatever you want: simple and easy or complex and difficult. Do something different every week or keep working on the same thing from last week.

Want to clean out your email inbox? Go for it. Want to write an OpenGL program? Do it. This week it’s NextJS or HTMLX? Sounds great.

Talk to everyone about it. Get ideas. Bounce off designs and options you have. Teach others what you know and show them what you’ve found on your own.

In short: Hack, help others hack, and socialize. Hacker Sunday!

Last updated on