Hackathons as Practice

AI has lowered the barrier to execution.

It’s easier than ever to prototype, automate, and ship. In many cases, you can get surprisingly far just by prompting well.

That’s powerful.

But I’ve been thinking about something else.

If I’m not directly wrestling with constraints — making trade-offs, debugging, synthesizing pieces under pressure — my understanding feels thinner. I might be producing output, but not necessarily building depth.

Over the past few years, hackathons have become one way I counterbalance that.

Not as competitions. Not as résumé items. Not even primarily as networking.

As practice.

Constrained Environments

Hackathons create a very particular environment:

• Time-bound
• Public
• Imperfect
• Constrained

You don’t get months to refine. You don’t get perfect information. You don’t get permission from anyone.

You enter, you scope aggressively, you build, and you ship something.

Then something important happens: feedback.

From teammates. From judges. From the system itself. From what breaks.

That feedback loop is compressed.

Instead of reading about a tool, you try to use it. Instead of discussing an idea, you attempt to implement it. Instead of speculating, you discover where you actually misunderstand.

For me, that loop — build → ship → reflect → repeat — has become the real value.

Staying in the Loop

There’s a lot of conversation right now about automating everything with agents.

I find myself asking a slightly different question:

How do I stay in the loop while using those tools?

How do I understand what I’m delegating?

Hackathons help with that.

They force you to remain hands-on. They expose shallow understanding quickly. They create a small but real arena for experimentation.

Over time, entering a few hackathons each year has felt less like “participating in events” and more like maintaining a discipline.

Hackathon CoP

Because of that, I’ve set up a small container: Hackathon CoP — Hackathon Community of Practice.

It’s not an organization in the traditional sense. There’s no program or curriculum.

It’s simply a place for professionals who use hackathons as part of their learning loop — to signal upcoming events, form teams, and reflect on what they’re building.

Nothing more ambitious than that.

If it resonates, you’re welcome to have a look: https://hackathoncop.org

I’ll keep entering the arena either way.