The ACM chapter in my college had organized a 48 hour hackathon, and I took part in it, first I had to submit an idea and like 2 days later they mailed me saying I had got selected, and I went to the auditorium and oh god… It was insane, such a huge auditorium, so many people, who can code… its amazing.
Wow I didn't know there were so many people who can code. Amazing!
My idea was making a VR based pcb cad file projector on the real unsoldered pcb board, so you can solder without having to look back and forth between schematic and solder station. Honestly, my idea was pretty meh, meh as in feasibility and real-life application, but it was cool, like you felt like iron man or something lol. And I am not even that good in computer vision and stuff, had to take a lot of help from LLM in making it possible lol. Woke up on 6th september, seeing an email from ACM at 0033 hours. So after consuming the epic mutton biryani from fresher special lunch (it was scheduled on that day lol) I joined them at 1400 hours.
Epic mutton biryani from fresher's special lunch
I will not discus much about the tech but about my own experience. We were two people in our team “Dahi Vada” and my second team mate had just learnt to write a for-loop… So I had lowk carry the entire project. So for the techstack I chose opencv and raylib bindings via python. I chose raylib because I had to turn it into a VR project later on and also for adding any GUI features. For the VR headset part, I was just decided to use my phone, but later I realized, I don’t really need gyroscope either… so I was just streaming the camera from my phone using scrcpy. One thing I immediately noticed is that my stupid old pavillion couldn’t keep up with the bright light of auditorium, so I had to use bright white light themes just to be able to read what was on my screen. Everyone had some fancy laptop lol, the most common laptop in hackathon was the infamous HP Victus haha. The power was down in some zones of the auditorium for like 2.5 hours and like almost 60% of the gaming pc users were left without any battery; haha, them always talk about how thin n lights are waste of money, now look at ’em !!!
Padhne wale bache kahin bhi padh lete h
Anyways we started building, my team mate tried to act as much as he couold that was working too, I mean I kind of felt bad for dragging him into this… I clearly knew his skill level, yet I still wanted him to work with me. Anyways around 12 am, we are done with first version of our prototype, and so is everyone, so most of us stop programming, since judging is about to begin at 1 am, and you don’t want a broken product in front of the judges, so like by 0030 hours everyone is just watching reels or doing some bullshit. I mean, they were doing it before too… while their agents were running. Man hackathons must have been fun before agents, these days hackathon just feel like gamblining in a casino you know. And in that small time frame you can never win if you decide not to use a LLM, unless its some novel technical idea, you need ui and other complex but boring “plumbing” stuff done. By 0200 hours, judging finally starts… they’re running 1 hour behind schedule. I was so sleepy man, I don’t remember anything from the night, I was just lowk unconcious or something, I don’t remember if I slept or not. I think I had left a deepseek agent running while I felt asleep for some time. By 0300 hours, judges finally come to us. We have a pitching time limit of 4 minutes, judges ask a few questions, I answer them. I think I spoke well, even if I couldn’t speak like a salesman, I spoke like a normal human being, big step for me I guess. I don’t think the judges were convinced my idea was feasible and I don’t blame them. They gave some valuable insights like hiding the components that have already soldered from being projected, good stuff, gonna implement the next day. So after that I tried doing the “Playing Touhou at 3am” challenge at 0330 hours, started playing Touhou 8, practicing Kaguya’s spell cards… and the senior next to me asked… “is that Touhou?”… HOLY SHIT I FOUND A TOUHOU FAN IN REAL LIFE!!! And then we just go into a really nice discussion about all kinds of things, we exchange socials and all. He hates my taste in web 1.0 and almost everything, but its alright since we both like Reimu’s armpits.
Playing Touhou at 3am (scary)
The hackathon had a school-like only 15 at-a-time to toilet system, so like I had to queue for access to washroom and even I did get the privilige of washroom, a senior girl (???) escorted group of 15 boys to men’s washroom. The washroom was near a basketball stadium and I saw like 5 members of organizing commitee just playing basketball there… at 3am ✌️ After that I come back, I think I fell asleep from 0400 hours to 0530 hours, around 0530, all team judging is finally done and we are allowed to leave for breakfast, I reach back my room at 0600 and immediately fell asleep, woke up to an email from ACM, sayin’ that was I was accepted and I had to come back for round 2 of the hackathon. So I did come back for the morning session at 1000 hours… but my teammate, he was really ill, he just came and sat next to me just because i called him this just lowk killed my morale too, and I was also out of ideas on how I could make it better, it simply wasn’t it man… I felt alone and clueless… so instead of wasting judge’s time and my sleep, I simply decided to withdraw myself from the hackathon. I have learnt a lot, that’s all it matters (cope). Welp, like the thing is I cannot think in terms of feasibility and all. It’s what is hurting me during hackathon. I need an “idea guy”, to guide my ship during an hackathon. Anyways when I came to hostel at 1400 hours, I decided not to go back anymore, simply withdrew myself. I got no OD for second half, man I didn’t want to go to classes, even I was so tiered lol. So I missed a few classes, I slept from 1500 to 1900 hours. Next time in a hackathon, I definitely want a larger team, it’s simply for fun, the entire point of overnight hackathon is to have fun doing random things with friends who have shared interest in technology. Not something like a competition where you have to push yourself to do better. And most importantly always bring a blanket and a pillow to an overnight hackathon haha.
Atleast I got a cool laptop sticker hehe
Gamejams are more kind of my thing man, I simply don’t like this SaaS like thinking, in terms of economic feasiblity and all, I mean I can build one, but I shouldn’t be the lead, I need someone else to give me proper instructions on what they want me to do next. I simply love thinking in terms of what is “cool”. Definitely not my last hackathon, but let’s see, but one thing is sure — I am not becoming the team lead lol.
