Hackathons

I've always loved participating in hackathons. There's something uniquely exhilarating about 36 hours of pure coding madness—the energy, the pressure, the creativity that flows when you're racing against the clock to build something from scratch.

Hackathons have this way of keeping me completely engrossed. When you're in the zone, time becomes irrelevant. You're just focused on solving the problem, implementing features, fixing bugs, and somehow making it all work before the deadline hits.

The Learning Experience

What I love most about hackathons is that I always manage to learn something new from every event. Sometimes it's discovering a new library that makes your life easier. Sometimes it's learning a new framework under pressure. Sometimes it's figuring out how to integrate technologies you've never used before.

But it's not just about the technical skills. Hackathons taught me how to sell a product to judges. How to present your idea in a way that resonates. How to tell a story about what you built and why it matters. These soft skills are just as valuable as the code you write.

The Runner-Up Win

One of my earliest hackathons was Hackrush 2.0 by Qwiklabs at SRMIST, KTR, and I won runner-up. That feeling of validation—knowing that what you built in such a short time was good enough to stand out—was incredible.

It wasn't just about the win, though. It was about the experience. The late-night coding sessions, the team collaboration, the problem-solving under pressure, the adrenaline rush of presenting your project. All of it made me love coding even more.

The Wish to Return

I wish to experience that run again sometime. Life gets busy, priorities shift, but there's a part of me that misses the chaos and excitement of hackathons. The community, the innovation, the pure joy of building something in a weekend.

Maybe one day soon, I'll find myself back in a hackathon venue, laptop open, energy drink in hand, ready to code through the night once again.