The Hacker's Guide to Hacking

What is a Hack?

In a nutshell: a "hack" is a small project that solves one problem, designed and executed as quickly as possible. Examples of hacks include:

• a working demo of a new or modified algorithm (example here)
• an outline of a larger project, with some key features scoped (example here)
• a new visualization of an old dataset (for example here)
• a modified algorithm applied to a new dataset
• a mash-up of two pre-existing pieces of code to perform some new function (example here)
• Note: Hacks need not be code! Hacks could be other things related to code (e.g. documentation, a logo, ...) or something entirely different (a comic, a video, a popular science article, a poem, field notes etc). This is your change to get creative!

and so on. Feel free to add more examples.

Pro-Tips

Add yours below, please!

• Be selfish: arrive with a goal, and make sure you achieve it

• Hacking is a community activity: find someone you can pair code with

• Do the simplest thing that will work, you can extend it later

• Love your neighbor: you might be the person they need to solve their problem, and vice versa

• When discussing, pitch your explanation at the least experienced hacker in the group, and you'll end up better understanding what you're trying to do

Questions

Write yours here, hopefully someone else will answer, and/or write a new tip!

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