Game jams: vibrant, chaotic energy, fueled by pizza and Red Bull, where you speedrun a half-baked platformer about existential dread in 48 hours and somehow it works. Hackathons: serious business casual, corporate swag bags, where you build "an AI-powered blockchain solution for enterprise synergy" that'll be abandoned in a GitHub graveyard by Tuesday. Same sleep deprivation, different aesthetic. One gives you indie cred, the other gives you LinkedIn clout.