That I haven’t been to one

It's an experience worth having once or twice, but not beyond that imho. You're not missing much.

I suspect they're a bit of a fad that'll die out in all honesty.

@AlmondSauce I just wanna go to one and socialize with other devs honestly I went to a convention a few years ago and it was incredible I wanna do more stuff like that

I had a great time during my first few hackathons, thought it really was a memorable experience.

I would totally recommend going.
Would say that it's good to try both a hackday and a few different weekend hackathon.
Cause they can vary greatly.
Some hackathons are more like conference parties.
Some people are sick of that shit. Like I imagine it would be the type of thing Richard on Silicon Valley would mock. But it's fun as hell if you're not jaded and used to that stuff.

As long as you enter with the correct expectations.

1. It's gonna be kinda stressful cause there's often so many other stuff like dinners, presentations etc eating up your coding time.
2. Don't expect to learn new tech. People who try a new framework often end up getting stuck. Use tech you know, and limit your innovation to the concept or business domain.
3. Don't expect to collab all that much. Usually teams end up doing 1 isolated feature each, cause misunderstandings and merge conflicts easily botch a project on a tight deadline.
4. Don't pair program. The joy of a hack is to write ugly code quickly. Pair programming inevitably leads to debating variable names.
5. Honestly - don't expect a ton of socializing in relation to code and getting creative feedback on project ideas. I find most of the socialising during longer hacks take place in the bar after coding is done, talking shit.

@jiraTicket I would never go in with the expectation to learn a framework or something of that scale, if people blame the hackathon for that they have a screw loose