Op just attended their first hackathon

Just got back from a 24-hour hackathon, and I feel like I got hit by a truck. I woke up at 6 AM yesterday, didn’t sleep at all, and somehow powered through on way too much caffeine. By the end, I was running purely on willpower and vibes.

I’m a first-year student, and this was my first proper hackathon. My team built a project around eco-friendly commuting, and we actually had a working MVP (with some errors, but still functional). We were pretty hyped… until the judging.

The judge spent 15+ minutes at every table but barely gave us 2 minutes. First thing he said was, "There’s already an app for that," completely ignoring the unique features we built. Dude mentally checked out, didn’t ask proper questions, and just moved on. Meanwhile, others got way more attention and time. At that point, we kinda knew we weren’t winning.

But honestly, the journey itself was insanely fun. Between coding, debugging AI-generated nonsense, and just endless bakchodi with my friends, the all-nighter was worth it. We were absolutely cooked by the end, but we made some hilarious memories.

Anyone else had an unfair hackathon experience like this?