This past fall, I was invited to participate in MadHacks, Wisconsin's biggest
hackathon. It also happened to be my first. Some of my friends had been to hackathons, and I'd seen plenty
of hackathon vlogs online, so I went in somewhat knowing what to expect. Upon arriving at UW-Madison's Morgridge Hall
(where the event was taking place), I recieved some complementary merchandise, checked out the job fair, and started
brainstorming ideas with my team.
The Idea
Before MadHacks, my most recent project had been creating a multiplayer version of the Desmos Graphing Calculator by using
their graphing api. For our project, we decided to extend this idea by creating a social media site where users
can create, share, and discover cool Desmos graphs. While I was familiar with the Desmos api, we used next.js and
React to build the actual site, two technologies I had no prior experience in. Looking back, I'm glad to have tried
out some new tools during the hackathon, but during the event it was somewhat frustrating having to troubleshoot issues
in territory I had never explored.
Me on the local news thinking very intensely
The Work
And so ensued about 10 hours of hacking with breaks only to go to the bathroom and to eat. I told myself I would go to
bed at midnight, but I was in a state of flow that I had rarely experienced at home. There was a lot to do and not a lot
of time to do it, but I was confident that my team and I could get it done. Eventually, however, Rice Krispies Treats
and Goldfish Crackers couldn't keep me going any longer, and I went to bed at 1am.
The record stack of 8 energy drinks I found on one of my walking breaks
The Morning
After about 3 hours of sleep, I woke up around 4am. For some reason it's difficult to sleep on the floor in the basement
of a university building. I wasn't quite ready to get back to work, so I went upstairs (my team worked primarily in the
basement) to stretch my legs. I saw two interesting things on my short walk: the big screen in the entrance of Morgridge Hall
displaying the Windows 11 homescreen, and some snack-sized bags of Pirate's Booty which I took downstairs to eat before
getting back to work.
The large screen at the entrance of Morgridge Hall running Windows 11
The Final Stretch
At this point, it was time to get the project done. Our group decided to call it "Graph-4M" because the GitHub repository was
called graph-fourm (a misspelling of graph-forum) and we just rolled with it. Most of the functionality was complete with
only a few tweaks and bug-fixes needing to be made. My other team members went to bed around 5:30am, so I finished my tasks
and got to work on the devpost where the project would be submitted.
The final form of Graph-4M's explore page
Emerging from the Cave
I had gotten everything into a good state about an hour before breakfast, so I decided to leave the building for the first
time in around 20 hours. It seemed like a good opportunity to go for a jog (having only gotten 4,000 steps the day prior)
and to explore the campus. My team was still sleeping, so I left them a note that read "gone to touch grass. be back before breakfast."
The views of Lake Mendota and the city itself at sunrise were amazing, especially after seeing little outside of a computer screen
for the past however many hours. I'm still not sure where I'll be going to college, but that jog got me really excited for
the possibility that it might be UW-Madison.
View of Lake Mendota on my early morning jog
Victory and Sleep
Judging was held in one of the largest lecture halls on campus. We were to show off our project to 4
judges that would come around to evaluate our work. I'm not the best at giving presentations (especially on 3 hours of sleep),
so I let the other members of my team do most of the talking. Based on the judge's reactions, I felt we did
pretty good but not good enough to win any awards. So I was shocked when results came in and Graph-4M had won
the superlative of "Most Social Project!" It wasn't the top award, but I couldn't care less. That near sleepless night
had paid off, and I left Madhacks with a sense of accomplishment and a strong desire to get back to my bed as soon as possible.
An impressive sunrise in front of Bascom Hall (also on my morning walk)
Reflections
For a first hackathon, MadHacks was pretty great! I met a lot of cool people, learned some new technologies, and had an interesting
project to show to my friends back home. I also learned that the limit of my ability to program for long periods of time was a
lot longer than I had previously thought. Nearly 10 hours straight of coding was not something I would have ever imagined
possible for me at the time, but (with some caffeine) it was very doable.
