Make your next hackathon a success with these hackathon starters from MLH and GitHub

Setting up a new hackathon project can take up precious time and turn out to be more complicated than you initially planned. Major League Hacking (MLH) and GitHub have created two new hackathon starters to help developers get their applications up and running quicker: the Flask Hackathon Starter and the Node.js Hackathon Starter.

Hackathons are 24-hour (or longer) invention marathons where time is a limited resource—you want to save time where you can. The last place a developer wants to be is buried in a configuration file while the time for building slips away. Whether you’re a student about to write your first line of code, or an experienced developer building a new project, these resources will get you up to speed on the technology and hacking in no time.

Bootstrap your hackathon projects in a snap

MLH and GitHub want students to have the best possible experience participating in a hackathon. And that means not getting stuck on the small things. We built these resources to help hackers have a better learning experience.

Two of the most popular languages that hackers use at hackathons are Python and Node.js. We decided to start with two simple, yet powerful, frameworks—Flask (Python) and Express (Node)—because we think these will make the biggest impact on our community.

Both hackathon starters contain interactive examples and documentation to guide you through building a new application. The projects cover the basics of building a web application including making API calls, using OAuth for authentication, and setting up a new database—everything you need to get started!

Demo Link 1

Demo Link 2

Want to contribute? Open an issue—we are always open to your feedback and suggestions on how we can improve.

Start building with these hackathon resources and demos

Written by

Vanessa Gennarelli

@mozzadrella