What to do when things aren’t working
You’ll get stuck when you’re learning. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Solving problems makes for good stories, and good stories make for good demos. You really don’t want to be stuck for too long, though. Time runs out quickly at hackathons, so you’ll need to know how to get unstuck — quickly.
There are lots of resources for you to get unstuck: tutorials, sample code, Stack Overflow, documentation, and more. Sponsoring companies often send software developers who walk around to see how everyone’s doing. Hackathons sometimes have fancy ways to get ahold of mentors. For example, we built an app for hackers to find mentors during Hack the North. Whether you’ve been stuck for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, there are ways to get help.
The Workflow
Broadly, there are three stages to problem solving at hackathons: trying to solve it yourself, getting help from others, and desperation. It’s rewarding to have a little of each. It’s fun to solve things on your own. It’s fun to meet new people. And, believe us, solving a problem after hours of desperation can make for a story you’ll never forget.
But many people don’t know when to get help. Here’s a simple answer: don’t wait more than 30 minutes. You just don’t have enough time to wait longer than that. The math is easy: if you’re learning a lot but keep waiting three hours before asking for help, chances are that you’ll only get to five things. If one of those things is setting up your computer, and another is getting the code from the tutorial to run, you’re left with three things. Three isn’t enough. Get help after 30 minutes.
But what happens when the people you talk to can’t help? Well, that’s desperation. You’ll Google some more, talk to your team more, talk to more mentors, and read more code. You’ll do whatever you have to do to figure it out before time runs out.
The Internet
Google is absolutely invaluable. For example, if you want to install a program for building Android apps, you can literally Google “program for building Android apps” and Android Studio (which is what you’re looking for) will be the first result. If you want to put a picture in some HTML, you can Google that and the first result will have some code that you can use.
It sometimes helps to add which operating system you’re using (Windows, Mac, Linux) and which versions you’re using of things (Python 2.7 vs. Python 3).
install python 2.7 windows 10
If you get an error message, you can often just copy the error message into Google and get a Stack Overflow (a Q&A website for computer programming) answer telling you how to fix it. If the error doesn’t have anything specific to your computer, you can put it in quotes to search for that exact error.
“Error installing mysql2: Failed to build gem native extension”
If you’re just getting started with new technology, you need to find some code and learn how it works. Tutorials explain code a little piece at a time, and open source projects give you a bunch of code all at once with less explanation. If you’re more experienced, it might be faster to read the open source code yourself. Otherwise, start with tutorials. You can use Google to find tutorials. Sometimes the technology will have a website which has tutorials and sample projects (ex. http://nodejs.org, http://android.com.
ios app tutorial
You can also build your own project by downloading sample code and modifying it to do what you want. This is often the fastest way to start a project with unfamiliar technology.
android location gps tracking sample code
Keep in mind that when using sample code from the internet, you are only allowed to claim things you have changed or added. Using someone else’s code without citing it is prohibited, and you will be disqualified for doing so.
People
You’ve been Googling for a half hour and can’t find anything. But you know what to do! You need to get help from real people at the event.
You’ll probably be in a large room or hallway with lots of tables. Take a walk around and check out what the people at those tables are working on. If they have a phone plugged into their computer, they’re probably working on a mobile app. If they have a NodeJS t-shirt on, they probably know Node. If there’s math on their whiteboard, they can probably do algorithms. Ask these people for help with these things if you need it. If they can’t help you, ask if they know people who can.
Hackathons might just be the first time in history that hundreds of young people from across the world can hang out in person every few weekends for free. They’re there because they’re passionate and resourceful and hardworking. You might want to talk to them to get some help, but you should also want to talk to them just because you can now. Which is pretty amazing.
Some hackathons set up a Slack for hackers to use. Slack is basically a bunch of chatrooms, which are called channels. They have names, like #javascript and #random. You could message in these channels asking for help. You might even be able to message the engineers that sponsoring companies brought along. There might also be a Facebook event, or a Facebook group. Don’t forget to post there too!
Mentoring App
This is an aside, but it’s an exciting one. Truth is, it’s not always easy to find someone to help you. You have to get up and walk around. The people you talk to might be busy. Or you might have guessed what their skills are and been wrong. It works often enough to be worth a shot, but it would be nice if it was easier.
The mentoring app we built last year was a big experiment. We didn’t know if it was going to work. We hadn’t ever used anything like it. We didn’t even know if it was a real problem. But, we wanted to try something a little more ambitious than push notifications. So we tried.
Turns out we succeeded! One team that got help through the app was one of the winners of Hack the North. Their hack, Pay My Face, allowed you to pay a person using just a picture of their face. They were having trouble getting the camera to work, so they requested some help through the app.
They got help in 10 minutes.
This is so exciting. We want more stories like this. We want you to get help in 10 minutes every time. If you get help faster, you’ll build better things. If you build better things, everyone has way more fun. So, if you’re coming to Hack the North this year, watch out for our mentoring app. It’s really exciting.
Conclusion
You’ll get stuck when you’re learning. But the things we’ve written above are essentially all you need to know to get unstuck. It’s pretty easy to remember: Use Google, and if you’re still stuck 30 minutes later, ask for help. Use slack, Facebook, or a mentoring system to find people to help you. Almost everyone at hackathons uses these strategies to solve problems. So that’s really it. All you need now is practice.
And, you know, after some practice, you might actually end up wanting to get stuck. Remember the three stages of problem solving? Google, people, and desperation, right? Desperation is the best part. Imagine it. None of your Google searches are working. After 30 minutes, you get help. You walk around and use the mentoring app. You talk to 10 different people and nobody has your fix. You start to feel as if you’re on the bleeding edge of something, don’t you? As if, when you solve it, you’ll have done something nobody else could, right? This is why we hack. So join us at Hack the North this year!
