Comment by pulak

Not so sure. I like learning at a pace in which I'm really understanding the technologies that I'm picking up. For PennApps, we do a series of tech talks over the course the week before the hackathon, and I encourage students who don't know how to code to attend those talks. I think "learning" at a hackathon can leave a lot of gaps in knowledge, which is not necessarily terrible but not the strategy I would immediately advise.