Hackathons

Hackathon is a term that's very popular with programmers. In the Linux community, it's known as a codefest. Lemmi just stop beating around the bush and tell you its definition. Hackathon means a 'come-together' of programmers with only one thing roaming in their minds.Computer programming. The event mostly runs for several days and nights. A programmer is not restricted on what to create. instead, one has  freedom on what to create, marathon,hence the name hackathon (marathon & hack.)

Usually, during this time,programmers spend most nights awake, taking coffee, beer and coding. In simple terms, that's how i'd describe it. these events are normally fun although i've never been into one but am thinking of coming up with one soon!!!! I'd like to take part in one instead of spending time with girls. I HATE RELATIONSHIPS!!YACK...

Case Studies:

Facebook 

Facebook is the largest social networiking site with more than a staggering 500 million users! it holds hackathons every 6-8 weeks. All its programmers and software engineers come together to build awesome apps site chatting services, notifiactions AJAX wall posting , just to name a few. Anybody at facebook can call for a hackathon event except their CEO,Mark Zuckerberg. Hackathons for real programmers!!

OpenBSD

It's been 11 years now, since OpenBSD started holding hackathons yearly. During this special moment, OpenBSD faces a rapid development. Their first hackathon was held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and was attended by ten developers.It  focused on cryptographic development; part of the reason for holding it in Canada was to avoid legal problems caused by United States regulations on the export of cryptographic software.