No more hack-days for me.

The hack-day used to be my favourite kind of event. But I’ve not really enjoyed the last couple I’ve been to. I’m not sure why.

Maybe I’m just getting old.

Specific things have niggled me though – and I thought them worth sharing. Maybe others are feeling the same about these events. Maybe I’m alone in feeling like this.

My hack-day is a developer’s speakeasy.

It’s where I get away from deadlines, milestones, next week’s release, last month’s specification. It’s where I just code.

A little part of me died when I saw a project planning tool for hack-day projects win a prize recently.

At my speakeasy, it’s ok to drink to get drunk. It’s ok to be coding, just coding.

The aim isn’t to build a prototype, nor to start a project that will live on past the day, nor to do some cheap R&D.

You could do all of these things, but you can have a successful hack-day without any of them.

In my speakeasy the aim is to spend some time being a coder. If you like, you can share what you discovered. You can throw away what you’ve done, use it to inspire yourself or others. Or, just to get a laugh.

Maybe you’ve given people a murky glimpse of the future. Maybe it’s a product for no-one. Most of the time, it’s just what it is – no more, no less.

In my hack-day, no-one moans about what they couldn’t do. Or blames others for their often woeful APIs. We just code. Around obstacles if we can, through them if we can’t.

In my speakeasy, you can drink moonshine.

Scrape away, even if it’s not allowed. Make up some data, just to make someone smile. Do something in terrible bad taste. It’s all allowed, there are no lawmen here.

And there’s often stuff you’re not allowed to play with in real life – new materials, people, perspectives, tools.

You’re allowed to play in my hack-day speakeasy and no-one will stop you. But if you don’t want to play with the sponsors’ toys, don’t.

My hack-days have only accidental connections with the Agile principles – I don’t care if you embrace change, if your software works, or even if you have a customer. Just come, and code, and share.

And the discipline needed to do Agile successfully? I leave that for my work. Agile, hack-days are not.

Hmm, prizes. It’s flattering to win them, but increasingly, they’re a silly distraction. More for the sponsors than the developers.

The judges’ huddling in a room discussing winners. Feels odd to me every time. I guess if you’re the sponsoring type, it’s important to have a meeting to look forward to while the hacks are being shown.

Hey sponsors, if you like what you see, write a blog post or find the developers and shake their hands.

Now, I can see how my speakeasy hack-day seems unrealistic. Hackdays need sponsorship. Who would sponsor such an open-ended, non-specific event?

But hack-days are an improbable game anyway, and I don’t know, but couldn’t they be done much more cheaply than they are? Without sponsors. Maybe, with developers even paying their own way?

Does anything of lasting value to the sponsors come out of them anyway? The most inspiring things I’ve seen have come from the least directed hacking.

Hack-days shouldn’t feel like work – those that aren’t created by developers for developers will fall short.

So, I’m giving organised hack-days a miss for the foreseeable future. But I’m going to make more effort to find time for hacking with other developers on my own terms.

Updated: I edited the post a little to make it a bit clearer that it’s about what I want out of hack-days, not necessarily what they should be in general. Others will completely disagree, and they might be right. But for me, these things speak to something that I haven’t felt in recent events.