I went to my first hackathon and this is what I experienced and thought.

I happened about 2 months ago to discover there was a conference happening in SF. It was called Developer Week 2017.

This happened to be my first hackathon as well. I wasn't sure what to expect. It also occurred on a Saturday and Sunday.

I found a team to work on, it was for a door dash like application, but for stadiums. I ended up building the API so the android devs could retrieve the data.

It was a simple node, express, mongodb setup. But I totally felt all these mixture of feelings as I was working on this simple piece of backend code. I read this article before writing this blog, which was helpful for a junior like me.

One of the things that hackathons teaches you is how to work together in a team of strangers, bring together your expertise in order to contribute to the development of the app, and learn to accept that sometimes your work may not be used. Although the ideal would be to work together with a group of people you know well, and on a project that the entire team have a fairly good reason to support. But, that's not always how it turns out.

I think that despite the fact that I've been formally learning for about 4 months now, and have had a year more of self-learning, I have really found myself further ahead in my studies than when I first began. Every little bit of knowledge can be useful in developing my skills as a web developer, from studying SQL that one time, to knowing how a mobile app works.

Most of us junior devs that come from a non-CS background may have a bad case of imposter syndromes. We're not gifted with the opportunity or desire to go through the CS programs because maybe we were not supported in that area, or we did not get the after-school tutoring and good instruction at school for mathematics.

But what this hackathon has taught me was that no one is good at everything. Everyone has their flaws, whether that be in designing, coding, communication or leading a project. No one is perfect, and everyone is learning or at least gaining experience from doing.

Being at the bottom of the totem pole is going to suck for awhile. But one day a lucky opportunity will come and you will work on a great project that will help you build your skills so you can move on to the next level. Then that's when you will realize that all those moments contemplating vague concepts, you will eventually get them, and on top of that figure out the next difficult and abstract problem, to one day become the expert.

For my future self, I hope you didn't give up because each day is a struggle, but when you keep trying and look back, you will realize that you have made progress as long as you continue to try and enjoy what you do.