For those who don’t know, a hackathon is basically an event, usually at least a day long, during which programmers, designers, engineers, artists, and basically anyone who wants to, gather and create some type of software. There’s usually no theme or certain type of software that we have to create. It’s up to each group’s creativity.

I’m standing in line with my friend, waiting to check in. We get shirts and sit down in the large room, waiting for our other two teammates. I still don’t know what I’m doing here, but I’m hoping that I’ll have a good time. I always thought that hackathons were for the super smart, super creative computer science majors, so I always stayed away, but after my floormates dragged me to a “Hackathons Demystified” event, I realized that I didn’t necessarily need to know how to code, since I could help with design. My friend Jen and I are sitting and wondering when the event will start.

6:00 p.m. Friday

A bunch of sponsors, BNY Mellon, Google, Facebook, VFA, GoDaddy, and more, are here and some of them speak to us about their companies and what outcomes they are looking for from this hackathon. My team consists of Jen, a freshman-decision science major, Jenny, a sophomore computer science major, Richard, a sophomore physics and computer science double major, and me, a derp. We each get wristbands and are dismissed to get dinner and start the 24 hour countdown.

7:00 p.m. Friday

We’re eating and discussing the various different ideas that we have. We brainstorm through domestic violence hotlines, music queue apps, Chrome extensions that sync with fitbits (those watches that calculate your heartbeat, exercise, weight, sleep, etc.), and more. Other than Richard, this is the first hackathon for all of us. We don’t know what to expect or which ideas are feasible. Even though I’m extremely confused, also I’m comfortable, since none of us are in it to win anything.

8:00 p.m. Friday

We finally come up with an idea: an official shopping website for our college’s Facebook group, For Sale @ CMU. We decide that we can categorize and organize the items that people put up in the Facebook group on a website that is connected to Facebook. Every time that someone puts up an item for sale, it will come up on the website. The purpose is to just create a more organized platform for selling/buying within the Carnegie Mellon community, since the Facebook page is often disorganized.

8:30 p.m. Friday

We start planning how to execute this web app. Richard, being very well versed in this field, sits us all down and guides us through GitHub, which is basically a place where we can store, share, and edit code with each other. Jen and I often find ourselves looking at each other over our laptop screens and bursting into laughter, since we have no idea what we’re doing. After a lot of patience on Richard’s part, we all successfully finish our crash course in learning how to “pull” in edited code and “push” out our own code into the shared database. Having only slept for a couple of hours the day before, my head is already starting to hurt.

9:00 p.m. Friday

The basic breakdown of what we have to work on for this web app is the backend and frontend. We decide to go with Python/Flask for the backend (which is essentially the dealer of data storage and delivery) and HTML/CSS/JS for the frontend (which is what viewers see, sorta like the decorations). Honestly, a couple of hours ago I would’ve never have understood any of this lingo, but it’s amazing how quickly the brain picks things up when it's under a time crunch. Richard deals with most of the backend stuff while Jenny, Jen, and I do most of the frontend.

9:30 p.m. Friday

After a lot of work, Jenny gets an orange header on the screen and we all clap for her. I was originally going to do the art/design, but since there was no need for any tablet use, I end up coding. Initially, I’m not confident at all, as I have the least coding experience in the group, but everyone is so patient and good at teaching that I pick it up quite quickly. I try rushing through CodeAcademy as fast as I can, since I think that it teaches the basics of HTML/CSS pretty decently.

12:00 a.m. Saturday

The organizers of the hackathon keep coming to our room with snacks, like the trolley in "Harry Potter," which I’m grateful for. I draw Saitama from "One Punch Man" on the blackboard, since my eyes are tired of staring at my laptop screen for hours. Usually, I sleep around 3:00 - 5:00 a.m. because I don’t get tired, as I’m usually not using my brain. It’s only midnight now, but I feel like I’ve used more brain power in these few hours than I've used for the rest of this entire semester.

1:30 a.m. Saturday

I finish my HTML code for the portion of the website that I was assigned and start hard coding CSS, not realizing that there are plenty of grid bases online that I can easily use. I realize, too late, that I hardcoded most of my page (which is apparently bad). Richard takes a break from his coding and looks at ours, only to see how we’re coding the CSS one class at a time for every different page. He then takes charge of the CSS (he’s our AD Carry).

2:00 a.m. Saturday

Jen makes the most beautiful 404 Error page.

2:30 a.m. Saturday

I stop thinking. Jen and I decide to go on a walk to Entropy, which is the school’s convenience store. It’s closed, so we walk to Hunt library, hoping that the Maggie Murph Cafe is open. It’s not. We decide to order pizza, but that’s closed too. So we walk back to our little dungeon and continue coding and messing around with the app.

5:00 a.m. Saturday

I keep trying to make a navigation bar. It keeps not working.

6:30 a.m. Saturday

I crawl under the table and wrap my jacket around myself. Jenny turns the lights off and we all pass out in intervals.

8:30 a.m. Saturday

I wake up to bagels.

1:00 p.m. Saturday

We finish the website. I’m not tired anymore. I feel so alert. I watch "Noblesse: Awakening" and feed my cats on Neko Atsume.

3:00 p.m. Saturday

We try to make the website prettier. The deadline is at 6:00 p.m. and we’re at a good place right now.

6:00 p.m. Saturday

We submit our website and chill in our room, watching funny YouTube videos and munching on some dinner.

Once it was all over, every group got to see each others' development. I was amazed by the cool things that people made and I was quite proud of my group’s project. Although I kept thinking that I could never code, I realized through this hackathon that I am capable of learning and doing things that I suck at. TartanHacks was tiring, but totally worth it. In 24 hours my group created a really cool web app, but, more than that, we bonded really well and we each learned so much. Everything that I previously thought about hackathons, about how I wasn’t “techy” enough to participate, was all proved false and I’m eternally grateful for that. To everyone who thinks that he/she can’t do it because he/she can’t code, just do it. You’ll learn a lot and have a lot of fun. This sounds corny, but I really can’t wait to participate in more hackathons in the future.