Remember that scene in the movie The Social Network where the guys in the dorm do shots while they compete to become Facebook’s first intern? That was a hackathon.

The hacker mindset in the highest form of any science or art.

Hackathons are events put together to bring the coding community together. They’re typically over a weekend. “Hackers” get together and pitch ideas. People then split up into teams and work on turning the ideas into apps.

Remember those all-night cramming sessions in college, when you would overcaffeinate, stay up for days, and muster all the focus you could to finish a paper or prepare for a test?

Attending a hackathon is a good way to grow your professional network and show off your talents to prospective employers. A hackathon is, quite literally, a party full of people who share a passion for technology.

Many hackathon attendees say they acquire practical skills that college courses fail to teach, and gain technical proficiency at a much faster pace.

The oldest people in the hackathon community are still young, only recently graduated or still in college while planning larger events than most will plan in entire careers.

Fall 2010 was the first iteration of the PennApps hackathon where 10 teams presented their hacks, and the 40 participants fit very comfortably into the Weiss Tech House.

People’s limits are their own ambition. Hackathons aren't about prizes – but about experience

You should attend a hackathon because: You’ll learn what you don’t know; you’ll realize what you *do* know, and teach others about what you know; you’ll grow as a developer, and many more

One goal I had going in was to become a better programmer. I didn’t enter to win. I entered to learn and I have from everyone I participated in.

At a hackathon, you accelerate your education, get in front of the top companies in the world, meet peers who are also building things, and, best of all, it’s fun!

Hackathon is actually lots of fun, and this article explains 5 reasons like Meet People, Work Under Pressure, and few more

People are going to realize that hackathon is more than just a hobby, but an educational revolution

There are all these different ways to live life and by surrounding yourself with people who are creating and viewing the world as something they can change and create you get this amazing energy and motivation to do the same.

What hackathons did teach me, however, was how to talk about code, work with software engineers, and speak their language. Even though I didn’t do the actual coding, I can explain steps of what each programmer did because I watched how they did it and asked them questions along the way.

Picking a programming language to learn can be a stressful task. The trendy language at any given time isn’t necessarily one that anyone will care about in a year, much less the one that’ll get you the best gigs.

If you’re coming to a hackathon with the goal of learning but don’t know what you want to learn, just pick a random language (Python and PHP are easiest for webapps) and plan to make an application that uses that language.

Essentially, there are three main motivations for people who attend hackathons; to learn new technology, to meet new people, to win a prize.

Are software competitions bad? Some participants say hackathons can stifle innovation and chill the vibe of camaraderie because they offer such large prizes. But that doesn't have to always be the case.

A the end of the hackathon it comes to the lessons you learn participating to this kind of event, which is why it is consider everyone a winner.

If you’re coming to a hackathon with the goal of learning but don’t know what you want to learn, just pick a random language (Python and PHP are easiest for webapps) and plan to make an application that uses that language.

You may have the most awesome idea for an app, but if it doesn't fit the theme of the hackathon you will lose.

Coming in with a few project ideas in your back pocket definitely doesn’t hurt. Even if you don’t know if your idea is feasible, pitching it can make you more memorable.

Many times we have seen teams discussing ideas at the beginning of hackathons. This is a waste of time. The hackathon is setup to hack, design, build and code, but not to chit chat about what idea would be the right one.

You’ll most certainly want to know enough about GitHub to manage your code. And if you’re long-distance you may also want to use something like Google Hangouts, or Skype.

If you’re coming to a hackathon with the goal of learning but don’t know what you want to learn, just pick a random language (Python and PHP are easiest for webapps) and plan to make an application that uses that language.

Be open-minded about what you might end up doing. When there is a theme to an event, you might have some idea of what you want to do, but at others, there will be all sorts of ways to use your skills and learn new things.

One of the most important things about taking part in a hackathon is don’t be too ambitious. You only have a set amount of time to build your project and its very easy to end up saying a lot of “it should do this” or “we would have done this” in your presentation at the end. Start small and then build on it.

Whether this is your first hackathon or your 50th, here are a few suggestions to keep things running smoothly.

“If you are in a hackathon, time is of essence,” says Stacey Mulcahy, a technical evangelist with Microsoft

Make your idea as simple as possible. It might feel counterintuitive at first, but I’ve learned that less is more.

Try and come up with a short story-based example that can explain the problem you are addressing, how big it is and in simple terms what your proposed solution does. If you don’t sell the problem well, people won’t care about your solution.

120 of the most acclaimed High School hackers gathered at Stack Exchange’s NYC office. No, they weren’t plotting to take over the world (although they probably could). They were gathering together to demo some of the amazing projects they work on in their spare time.

It gets weird at a hackathon around 5 am. People are walking around like zombies.language.

That feeling when you commit something you think is adequate but not great, and then your teammate comes back with a spectacular design or code improvement? Pretty awesome — since in my experience, that’s when my best learning takes place.

Jennie says, “I’ve attended five hackathons, but have only done one solo project. My first two hackathons, I didn’t do any work beyond the UI. Then, I worked with a friend with a similar knowledge on two hackathons, where I did about half the work. Finally, this weekend I ventured out on my own, and worked on my own. I’ve been interested in coding for about three years now, and though I still have much to learn, I feel as though I have been able to do a lot. By teaming up with friends, I was able to slowly learn how to make my own hacks.”

Kasey first met Mark at a Hackathon. She said, “I saw him first pitch the idea and I knew he was going to win it, which he did. And I thought he was really cute. After the Hackathon, we worked on the project for about three months.”

I have broken this post into two parts. The first focuses on high level philosophy about how to approach a hackathon as a winnable event. The second, coming later this week, is a more tactical play-by-play of what we did on the ground during our 48 hours.

We quickly brainstormed with the team all the different ideas we had and proceeded to a vote, without allowing ourselves to vote on our own ideas. The ideas were constrained by some custom-made rules: we privileged ideas with a “wow” effect

Our team’s skills were complementary, but not too much so. A good hackathon team probably needs both design and dev skills, and different people should specialize in one or the other to make things most efficient.

The former participants said their experiences prepared them to make an impact in the world with innovative products, many of which incubated in those intensive 48 hours.

The University of Michigan EECS building had no AT&T coverage inside, meaning each time we wanted to test the mobile app frontend, I would have to run outside into the blistering sub-zero weather with my phone and test it there. But that was more of an inconvenience more than anything else, and it was definitely not going to stop us from building our hack.

StartupBus has (rightly) been coined the ‘Navy SEALs Boot Camp of entrepreneurship’…Every March, 175+ top entrepreneurs board 7+ buses representing different regions – embarking on an epic 72-hour road trip

In reality, a hackathon is a sporting and social event. It’s like a regatta for nerds.

Who says hackers don’t exercise? Since the event is in the big house, there will be a variety of events occurring on the field - flag football, capture the flag, ultimate frisbee to name a few.

“For a lot of people, code is just a job. For us in South LA, we say code can save lives,” says Menjivar.

Just days before the end of the training for Israel Air Force’s Ofek Unit to become officers, soldiers in the Air Force’s Ofek Unit participated in a 48-hour hackathon. The winner received the Chief of Staff’s Award for Excellence.

That feeling when you commit something you think is adequate but not great, and then your teammate comes back with a spectacular design or code improvement? Pretty awesome — since in my experience, that’s when my best learning takes place.

Primary school children as young as seven tested their programming skills in a new competition at Hautlieu School. This is the first ever Junior Hackathon

The hackathon included diverse tasks as figuring out how to turn a smartphone into a nanosatellite; designing high-tech "smart accessories" for astronauts and many more.

The 2011 Water Hackathon was a first-of-its-kind gathering of software developers with the aim of increasing awareness of water sector challenges facing developing countries amongst technical communities in-country and globally.

Over 60 participants, 17 teams and two days of marathon computer programing, and they’re all girls of color under the age of 18.

In the context of ‘Feeding the World’, Food Valley NL is organising a True Potato Seeds Hackathon.During the True Potato Seeds Hackathon 36 students from different (applied) universities were asked to come up with promising business models on introducing True Potato Seeds in Africa.

At almost every hackathon, women are under-represented. It's just one symptom of a seemingly intractable issue: Women still make up the minority of workers in science, technology, and engineering fields.DevelopHer is part of a larger infrastructure that's popping up to support female developers.

The event, held at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, was the first international bioinformatics hackathon.

The young coders attending Codemotion Kids courses of Electronic, Coding and Robotics had the opportunity to work together and learn to use microcontrollers, crafts and programming to express themselves and their ideas to satisfy the challenge of the hackathon

McDonald's had invited developers, designers, start-ups and students who are passionate about new technology to participate and be part of "reinventing the restaurant experience."