My experience as a hacker and why you should become one too
21 Feb 2018What is a hacker?
It is known that the word hacker have been related to some kind of illegal activities. But I want you to think about hackers in a different way for a moment. Because you could be a hacker to and have fun!
Hacker is any person that uses their knowledge to overcome a problem.
I will refer as hacker as a person who participates in hackathons, with this in mind If you don’t know what a hackathon is, imagine having a weekend with really interesting people trying to solve real problems, have fun and learn.
When all started
It was two years ago when I finally decided to participate in the first Hackathon. It was hosted in my university made by a bunch of students who had a really good experience in other hackathon and wanted to bring that experience into our university -I thank them for that-.
At that time I was a little bit skeptical about hackathons, what I will be able to do there? what if I don’t fit in?. But it was a really great first experience, having fun, learning new stuff and the most shocking thing for me was to play a nerf battle gun (toy guns) in my own class.
After this first experience, it was like, I need more!
Never stop learning
After two years and more than 10 hackathons all over Europe. All I have done is learn something different from every hackathon, a new programing language, use new tools for web, improve my communication skills, teamwork, and an enormous etcetera.
At the end, the purpose of hackathons is to learn something new while having fun in a comfortable environment!
If you are an inveterate learner and haven’t been in one yet, you should try to apply to a close hackathon near you, or at least volunteer in one (you will learn a lot too). There are tons of hackathons every weekend all over the world -there will be even one in the Vatican City- and it’s a growing community.
It doesn’t matter which is your major if you are willing to learn and try something new there’s always room for one more hacker.
Where to start?
After being so inspired by the hacker community, I thought that it was my time to start inspiring others to enter the hacking world.
So here are some useful links to start looking for your first hackathon:
I hope I inspired you to start thinking about hackers in another way and see you hacking around
Happy Hacking!