I learned this lesson as a child, entering a painting competition handily to someone whose work was (in my opinion) not very good, but they had a much nicer camera, lighting, and a pleasant background.

Though its often much, much more effort to have judges who are also experts in the relevant field and give them the time to inspect in person the things to be judged. I don't think competitions will ever escape this "studying for the test" aspect fully. Its less actively harmful at least than the worst behaviors ive heard of (sabotage etc)

for a more programming related example, the sheer number of hackathons ive entered over the years where the winners had a relevant idea related to something in the news recently, and did basically nothing but a nonfunctional ui mockup of a crud app and won over teams that tried to make actually functional/fun things.

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Atheros 12 hours ago | parent [-]

They hacked the hackathon. You didn't.

	▲	RugnirViking 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I agree. When I say I learned "the lesson", there are two possible takeaways a person can take. If you want to win, it really helps to play the game to win (i.e. use these strategies). If you want to focus on your own pride and making something delightful that makes the world better, you have to explicitly choose that, and reject the idea in your mind that you will be rewarded for it. You might be rewarded anyway, but you can't expect it else you will often end up disappointed when you compare yourself to others.