My first hackathon was a fail...

#webdev #beginners #devjournal #learning

Hello Dev community 👋🏾,

Just thought I would talk about my experience doing my first hackathon.

So the hackathon I participated in was the Wix Make-a-SaaS hackathon. It was four of us in a group. These were the group roles:

Group Member "A" was in charge of the UI design using Figma
Group Member "B" was in charge of Machine Learning
Group Member "C" was in charge of FrontEnd
I was in charge of Backend but eventually ended up working on the Frontend

So, everything was nice in the beginning. Met my team members and everything was great. My teammates were nice and we all got along pretty well. The only negative was that all four of us were in completely different time zones.

Our Project

The name of our project is H20h_yeah! which is a website that helps people figure out ways to cut down on water consumption since there is water shortages through out the US. I wasn't too crazy about the idea but hey, it was 3 votes against 1 🤷🏾‍♀️. How you use H20h_yeah! is by signing up and uploading your water bill information.

The amount of your water bill will be compared to others in the community and will determine if you're wasting water or decreasing your water consumption.

You'll also be able to provide and receive tips within the online community.

Well, that was the original plan. Unfortunately, our project was not even 50% done. To this day, it is still incomplete. For some odd reason, communication between the group became less frequent. I guess different time zones and busy schedules played a huge part in that. But I felt as though I was the only one putting in the time and effort of working on the project.

Group member "A" already fulfilled their duty of creating the design.
Group member "B" was supposed to be working on a feature that allows you to use your camera to scan your water bill to upload it instead of entering the information manually.
Group member "C" began working on the front end using Editor X.
I was busy learning and reading the documentation on how to use backend code (which was honestly a waste of time. Turns out the backend code wasn't necessary🤦🏾‍♀️).

It's as though everyone gave up on the project

During the last two weeks, the project came to a halt. I wish I didn't waste all that time learning about the backend and just worked alongside Group Member "C" with the front end instead. The project would have came a long way if I worked on it from day 1. Group Member "C", I guess, was having difficulty learning how to navigate Wix/Editor X. In the end, I did help a bit in the front end but it was too late. There was too much work that was left. Group Member "B" on the other hand, promised to complete the camera feature using Machine Learning. But when I asked Group Member "B" to upload their portion of the code, I was ghosted! That person deleted their Github Profile and didn't bother answering back to my messages in Discord.

As a matter of fact, when I would message in group chat about everyone's progress, it seemed like no one was on the same page. So since, everyone stopped caring about the project so did I. I know that's not a good look but when you have team members who aren't as focused or motivated to work on something, it kind of decreases your morale. And I'm not someone who leaves a project unfinished. I was really disappointed in my team.

What I've learned

In the end, even though the project is incomplete, I wouldn't say this experience was a complete waste of time. I did learn about Wix and how to use a website builder. And so far, I can honestly say that I do not like Wix. Call me crazy, but I prefer building websites from scratch. Maybe I just need to build more projects using Wix, just to get a better grasp on how to use website builders.

I also enjoyed meeting new people and having that experience of working on a team, even though this experience wasn't terrible, it wasn't great either. In the future, will I have them as team members again? No don't think so. I'd rather work with a new team or work on a project myself.

I just had high hopes and expectations for my group and I was let down big time. I'm to blame too since I wasted time learning about something that wasn't necessary in the first place! All that time learning backend, could have been spent working on the front end and getting things done!

In all, I wish my team members the best and good luck in their future endeavors.