Hackathon Retrospective

48 hours, one project

Last month I participated in a hackathon and built Project Alpha — a real-time collaboration tool. Here's what I learned:

• Scope ruthlessly. We cut three features and still barely finished.
• Sleep matters. Our best code was written after a 2-hour nap.
• Demo > perfection. Judges care about the story, not your test coverage.

We won first place. Not bad for a weekend.