There's a hackathon called SillyHacks ( http://sillyhacks.online ) that I hope to enter, despite not really being a hackathon person these past 3-4 years.

What I like about this particular hackathon is that it's silly. Let me explain. Thread ↓

> Puppies have an instinctive drive to play-fight. It looks playful, but the reason they’re doing it is deadly serious. Prehistoric puppies that didn’t play-fight grew up into unskilled fighters.

This is from an excellent book by @TynanSylvester on game design.

> Think of the games kids play. They run and jump to master kinesthetic skills. They play house to learn social roles. [...] They’re practicing to be grownups, and loving every minute of it.

(Same book, http://tynansylvester.com/book .)

What's my point? One of the best ways to learn new skills is to play. It removes much of the stress from the equation.

If the puppies' play-fight could seriously hurt them, they would not be free to experiment. They would go with the most straightforward and least risky way to win, every time.

Back to hackathons. Some of them are quite serious. I organized Random Hacks of Kindness in Prague many years ago. This event led to real-world, helpful apps, based on input from NGOs.

I'm still proud of having organized Random Hacks of Kindness in Prague. I hope these serious hackathons are still going strong.

But then there are hackathons that are less serious. One example is the aptly named "Stupid Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas Hackathon" ( http://stupidhackathon.com , slightly NSFW).

Here's a selection of projects.

By explicitly saying that what you're going to do the next two days will not have any lasting impact, you remove all pressure to be productive and to avoid risks.

You can have silly ideas that go against your current skill set. Want to make a game in assembly although you never wrote a single line of ASM? Go for it. It'll be terrible, but who cares? You'll learn a lot.

I think it's an important mind set to have in your tool belt. Most of us, most of the time, _don't_ want to work on things that are useless and stupid. But sometimes, it's actually beneficial for our growth.

Sometimes it's _practical_ to engage silly mode.

The end.