Smart India Hackathon: Horrible experience
Background:- Our task was to do load forecasting for a given area. Hourly energy consumption data for past 5 years was given to us.

One government official asks the following questions:-
1. Why are you using deep learning for the project? Why are you not doing data analysis?
2. Which neural network "algorithm" you are using? He wanted to ask which model we are using, but he didn't have a single clue about Neural Networks.

3. Why are you using libraries? Why not your own code?

Here comes the biggest one,

4. Why haven't you developed your own "algorithm" (again, he meant model)? All you have done is used sone library. Where is "novelty" in your project?

I just want to say that if you don't know anything about ML/AI, then don't comment anything about it. And worst thing was, he was not ready to accept the fact that for capturing temporal dependencies where underlying probability distribution ia unknown, deep learning performs much better than traditional data analysis techniques.
After hearing his first question, second one was not a surprise for us. We were expecting something like that. For a few moments, we were speechless. Then one of us started by showing neural network architecture. But after some time, he rudely repeated the same question, "where is the algorithm". We told him every fucking thing used in the project, ranging from RMSprop optimizer to Backpropagation through time algorithm to mean squared loss error function.

Then very calmly, he asked third question, why are you using libraries? That moron wanted us to write a whole fucking optimized library. We were speechless at this question. Finally, one of us told him the "obvious" answer. We were completely demotivated. But it didnt end here. The real question was waiting. At the end, after listening to all of us, he dropped the final bomb, WHY HAVE YOU USED A NEURAL NETWORK "ALGORITHM" WHICH HAS ALREADY BEEN IMPLEMENTED? WHY DIDN'T YOU MAKE YOU OWN "ALGORITHM"? We again stated the obvious answer that it takes atleast an year or two of continuous hardwork to develop a state of art algorithm, that too when gou build it on top of some existing "algorithm". After listening to this, he left. His final response was "Try to make a new "algorithm"".

Needless to say, we were completely demotivated after this evaluation. We all had worked too hard for this. And we had ability to explain each and every part of the project intuitively and mathematically, but he was not even ready to listen.
Now, all of us are sitting aimlessly, waiting for Hackathon to end.😢😢😢😢😢

Worst hackathon experience? Probably that I have never attended one.

So the first hackathon I attended my team and I came stone last. So while we wait for the awards I have 3 beers to drown my sorrows (I am a 2 beer guy so I was already feeling it)

We go into the ceremony and there were not enough chairs at a table for my team, so I end up sitting at the winning teams table. Let's just say I adopted a bottle of wine.

A wine bottle down I am feeling super drunk. I told myself "no more booze" ... Then the tequila's started rolling. I must have been quite visibly drunk because the other people at the table were giving me more to drink. Eventually I was like "I am ok, I am ok"

I wake up 2 days later on the floor of my bedroom at my parents house. Apparently this is what happened after the tequila's:

I decided to have an awards ceremony of my own and hug EVERYONE, apparently one judge did not enjoy his drunken hug very much (lol). Then I threw up in the hotels courtesy car, and also ran backwards into their bushes.

A buddy of mine took me home, but was to scared to face my parents, so he dumped me (now asleep) on the my parents driveway, rang the bell and buggered off, leaving my parents to drag me inside.

Worst hackathon experience?
The day after I drunk 13 red bulls to help me plow through the 2 days.

Consolation?
First prize 😁

Worst way to experience a hackathon? Not having the computer you really need.

Recently was in a recruitment hackathon for leading technology company.
So, to test ppls networking, team building skill they grouped ppl into a team.
I was teamed up with noobs, and had very bad experience.
One guy in the team was arguing to use PHP for developing a web app.
Me : What PHP framework are u good at!?
He: what is framework !?
Me : like laravel etc..
He: no I meant we use plain PHP!

Me (mind voice) : go fuck yourself, I am bailing out , I Do not need the job

Me : It's ohk we only know NodeJs , so, gave a wierd smile

He was still arguing ,but I gave 0 f***
This is considered as a fight!?
Yeah not the worst though
Apparently the recruitment ppl liked him a lot in my team!

Worst hackathon experience? Going to one where you must only use app inventor 2 and my team didnt know jackshit, no understanding and rest or anything else, then in the end another team did something similar to us, so during presentation they thought we somehow copied them, we lost terribly, never again.

Worst Hackathon experience:
Taking an API built by a junior dev team with minimal specs and "hacking for two pointless days" to make it work in production...

The whole Hackathon idea was an experiment to see if they could make the dev team stay late if they bought pizza and said "have fun".

We all spent 2 days cursing at the shoddy tools and lamenting that you can't run a Hackathon with a single directive and "production ready goal" yet remove any choice the developers have to actually contribute.

Worst Hackathon Experience ever!
Had been to SAP for a hackathon last year. Built a complete solution for our challenge. Due to no sleep and 48 hours of non stop coding, my team mate who was supposed to present our solution screwed it up in the last minute. Now we blame ourselves for losing because of our bad presentation.

Not 100% hackathon, but I was once in one of those weekend coding challenges - aka: have idea, implement MVP, present to a Juri and get a chance to win a prize.

So, to start things off, you had a few months to prepare the idea, gather a team (minimum of 2, maximum of 5 per team) and register.

I gathered a few friends from university, that was cool. We were 5, I had the idea already, they agreed. I started talking business with some partners/governmental stuff (no time to explain all, ask in comments if you want to know).

2 weeks pass by after registering, still 1+ month before the event, 2 of the team members let me know they want to focus on university, so they cannot spend a weekend on this competition. Well, ok, still 3 people, no worries.

Fast forward, 1 week before the competition, another one says he won't be in town, we're 2. Still enough, we meet the requirements, it's just for the fun anyways.

Day 1 of the competition, I'm there waiting for my other teammate. Call him countless times, doesn't pick up. Later tells me he's sick.

I tell the organization about it. They asked: You can continue, but it's fine if you give up now.
> Yo, dafuck you mean give up? I'll die before I give up. It's for the fun anyways, worst case scenario I spend a nice weekend doing what I like *shrug*

So there I am, all alone, doing a first MVP of the mobile app in Android (without any prior android experience, and don't ask me why I chose to do mobile app for that project, was stupid back then).

Lots of nice things there, overall a good weekend, networking, food, gadgets and stuff like that.

Juri day, put on pretty clothes to present my super idea alongside my super MVP of the ugliest mobile app I've seen.

Judge 1: likes the idea, ugly app.
Judge 2: likes the idea, ugly app, could improve and work on the concept, etc
Judge 3: Lots of business questions, to which I came prepared with already potential clients and partners, liked that part although seemed a little confident of it working or not.
Judge 4: "Yo, that's the most stupid thing I've heard, not even gonna ask questions, that's just stupid"
Judge 5: A teacher in my university, the one to actually tell me about this competition, kind of like that meme from "How to train your dragon" where he does the thumbs up thing. Obviously the app sucks, but understandable, no one in the competition has much experience, bla bla bla

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Final decision: No prize, fuck the idea, got a participation amazon voucher of like, $10 usd. *shurg*

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Fast forward a few months, my aunt who shared the idea with me and who i was working with before the competition, sends me a link for an article on FB messenger.
The company where that MF judge worked at build a system exactly like the one I presented, claiming it was a very innovative idea. Never heard of them again, it was a consultation company (Deloitte), so I assume they didn't sell it well and dropped it also.

Moral of the story: I guess there's no moral, just have fun.