My experience at Hack The Future 2024

Recently, I had the chance to participate in Hack The Future 2024, a big hackathon event. It was definitely an experience!

The Best Parts: People and Provisions

Let’s start with the highlights. Honestly, what I enjoyed most about the event wasn’t just the coding, but everything around it. Getting to talk to other students and people was great. The overall atmosphere was buzzing, and you can’t complain about the free food and drinks, always a bonus at these kinds of events! It was a really well-organized and fun environment to be in.

The Challenge: Space Cadet platform

The project assignment itself sounded cool: we were tasked with building a platform to help train space cadets. The idea was to create something interactive for them.

However, the “hackathon” part really kicked in here. We only had a few hours to design, build, and present something functional. This definitely cranked up the stress levels quite a bit. Time flies when you’re coding under pressure!

Misunderstandings and Technical Hurdles

We hit our first snag pretty early on. We initially misunderstood the core goal of the assignment. We thought the main focus was on tracking the cadets’ accomplishments and progress. It turned out the organizers were looking more for actual training games or modules where cadets could earn scores. Realizing this partway through meant we had to rethink our approach.

On top of that, we wrestled with our backend. We noticed our initial setup was developing really slowly. In trying to fix it, we actually rebuilt parts of it multiple times. Our mistake here was trying too hard to build it the “right way”, thinking about clean architecture/code, when we really needed the “fast way” to get something working for the demo. In a hackathon, speed matters more than perfection.

Lessons Learned (Even Without Winning)

In the end, we didn’t win any prizes. But despite the stress, the initial confusion, and the backend struggles, it was definitely a valuable learning experience.

• Clarify Requirements: Double-checking that you really understand the assignment upfront is crucial.
• Hackathon Mindset: Prioritize getting a minimum viable product (MVP) working quickly over building the perfect, most robust solution. Speed beats elegance when the clock is ticking.
• Teamwork Under Pressure: Working together when things aren’t going smoothly is a skill in itself.

So, while our space cadet platform might not have reached the stars, Hack The Future 2024 was a memorable event filled with good conversations, snacks, and some hard-earned lessons in practical development. Definitely worth experiencing!