The word Hackathon is so commonly used in today’s technological sphere that no one realises it was coined by mixing two words — hack and marathon, where “hack” is used in the sense of exploratory programming. Yes, the word Hackathon is a portmanteau and has been around for 20 years now. Today, this write-up will take you through a brief history of hackathons.
Origin
The idea of a hackathon, i.e., to create a software/project in a stipulated amount of time is not new. Several universities, as well as organisations, have been conducting competitions where people are asked to complete a task/project in limited hours.
Did you know that Mahatma Gandhi actually announced a Design Competition way back in July 1929? Not only this, but he also announced One Lakh Rupees or 7700 Pounds as the prize money. This happened when he wanted to encourage people to take up the spinning wheel. He also laid down elaborate conditions for the same. The idea behind the same was to encourage homegrown textiles.
However, the origin of the modern-day hackathon, also known as a hack day or hackfest; goes back in 1999 when OpenBSD organised a cryptographic development event in Alberta on June 4. The name “hackathon” was coined by Niels Provos from OpenBSD. Wikipedia reveals that ten developers came together in this hackathon to avoid legal problems caused due to export regulations of cryptographic software from the US.
Around the same time, Sun Microsystems organised the JavaOne Conference where attendees were challenged to write a Java program for the new Palm V personal digital assistant (PDA). Soon enough, there were plenty of hackathon events being held per year by other organisations, mostly universities.
Evolution
The evolution of the internet and personal computers made it possible for people to get more connected now and they could communicate with their teams as well as could bring their own computers in order to work together on projects in a team. However, there was not much innovation of the hackathon format until 2005 when modernisation of web development technologies took place.
As soon as Amazon Web Services and Ruby on Rails were shown to the masses, the hackathons grew rapidly as people were now able to look for information online. The companies started having in-house hackathons for brainstorming innovative ideas and launching great products. More in-company hackathons started taking place later in 2006 by companies such as Facebook and Yahoo.
Popularity
Now, hackathons became significantly more widespread and started attracting companies and venture capitalists who were in the dire need of a way to quickly develop new software technologies and to locate new areas for innovation and funding. Technology companies realised that hackathons had something to offer to them — talent and products.
The involvement of sponsors, partners, and recruiters in hackathons made hackathons more prevalent among developers with the inclusion of other significant activities, like workshops, interaction with sponsors, hands-on labs, job opportunities, presentations, games, and food stalls. This is pretty much the format we see in modern-day hackathons.
Conclusion
There is no way to tell how many hackathons are held a year in India or worldwide, but there is a large number of organisations who keep conducting public hackathons and coding competitions on a regular basis.
TechGig also organises hackathons as well as competitive coding events all around the year, for developers to learn, compete, grow, and win. TechGig Code Gladiators 2020 is a popular annual event that is now open for registrations. Given the pandemic circumstances, the Code Gladiators 2020 event has gone completely online and more than 1 lakh developers have already registered. There are several big brands sponsoring this event and the competition is offering prizes worth INR 50 lakh.
