Preventing Cheating At Hackathons 104
theodp writes "The fist rule of Hackathon Club is don't talk about Hackathon Club cheating. But ever-increasing stakes — the MHacks Hackathon at the Univ. of Michigan is offering over $30,000 in prizes — prompts Kevin Conley to broach the subject, suggesting it's time for some common-sense measures — including showing one's code or reducing prize money — to discourage Hackathon ruses, which can include pre-coding, faked live demos/videos, and the use of remote teammates."
They cracked my hack-a-thon! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you allow video submissions as some kind of proof then your "hackathon" is broken and they "hacked" it.
There is no such thing as code that doesn't really on previously developed code. You used printf! You're out!
Somebody needs to read The Mythical Man Month. Adding more hackers to a late hacking project just makes it later. If they can stay organized and succeed in a larger group in a limited time frame then they have truly accomplished something even most software engineers cannot do.
Total off-topic (Score:4, Interesting)