The latest articles on DEV Community by Tinu Baby (@tinu_baby_60a807e93832be1). https://dev.to/tinu_baby_60a807e93832be1 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4171902%2F85e4e676-0f63-4331-848a-567e2b7700ce.png https://dev.to/tinu_baby_60a807e93832be1 en Tinu Baby Thu, 08 Oct 2026 18:04:01 +0000 https://dev.to/tinu_baby_60a807e93832be1/what-i-learned-while-building-my-first-hackathon-project-11h7 https://dev.to/tinu_baby_60a807e93832be1/what-i-learned-while-building-my-first-hackathon-project-11h7 <p>Building a project for a hackathon is a completely different experience from just following a tutorial.</p> <p>You have limited time, unexpected bugs, and a lot of things to figure out along the way.</p> <p>While working on my recent project, I learned a few things:</p> <ul> <li>Keep the idea simple. A small working feature is better than ten unfinished ones.</li> <li>Debug instead of guessing. Reading error messages carefully can save a lot of time.</li> <li>Git is important. Frequent commits make it much easier to recover when something breaks.</li> <li>UI matters. Even a technically good project feels incomplete if the interface is difficult to use.</li> <li>Documentation helps. Writing down what the project does makes it easier for others (and future me) to understand.</li> </ul> <p>The biggest lesson?</p> <p>«You don't need to know everything before starting. Start building, run into problems, and learn what you need along the way.»</p> <p>Still learning, still breaking things, and hopefully building better projects with every attempt. 😄</p> webdev hackathon programming