Using Hackathons to Learn

On Wednesday, June 18th, I will begin hosting weekly coding sessions (or short hackathons) in Downtown Scranton. You can read more about them here. There have been a lot questions on what to expect, what people should be doing, and how the sessions will be structured. It’s important to remember that these sessions will really be a way for programmers, designers, and other folks to get together and work on things they want to work on. However, that doesn’t mean that attendees can’t take the time to learn.

People can do whatever they want when they attend the coding sessions. It’s just 3 dedicated hours for a project of your choice. That also means if you want to learn something new you can. A couple of weeks ago, after my appearance on How to Hold a Pencil, I wrote a post on How to Learn Web Development and I mentioned several online resources to do that.

Instead of working on a specific project, you can go through these online courses, pick up a book and do the tutorials, or fine some other means. Like I said, these sessions are just time set aside to do something. If that something is learn a new skill, why not use the time to do so. Maybe by the end of the summer you’ll have a tangible product to show off to people in a shiny new language you know!