Lost So Bad, Got Humble Again

wek 34

Mar 16, 2026

Hello hello gang, what's up? another week, another story. This time it's so weird. The last week's newsletter I was aura farming; I was saying, "Oh look at this, look at that." Now this week it's all opposite. It's me trying to be real. I really didn't want to make this newsletter because it's so sad but that's the part of it and we just have to do it

Losing A Hackathon

Last week’s newsletter was about how I won and how easy that win felt. But this Saturday I went to a 24 hour hackathon and things were very different.

The theme was about protecting IT services and monitoring networks. I thought it would be simple. I assumed I could reuse a script and maybe win again. But it turned out to be a heavy backend coding hackathon.

We built the project, even used some ML like Isolation Forest. The project and presentation were good. But I realized later why we lost, and honestly the reason was pretty silly.

We coded almost everything using Claude. In the previous hackathon we also used AI, but we still understood the code. This time we were using complex things in the backend and I didn’t really understand them myself.

When the judges asked questions I couldn’t answer properly. I was the only coder in the team so the pressure was on me. The real mistake was simple. I trusted the AI generated code without fully reading or understanding it.

Everything else was good but that one mistake cost us the win. Losing itself is fine. I don’t mind losing. But this one hurt because the win felt very close.

This whole month is basically hackathon month, so I will probably attend more. And one thing I am definitely changing is this: never rely blindly on AI code. Every hackathon I lose teaches me something new. I’ll start writing these lessons down as simple points so I can keep them in one place.

Don’t try to do everything alone and don’t build the same thing everyone else is building. If many teams are doing the same idea, you just become part of the crowd. Try to build something a little more unique.
If you know the language well, using tools like Cursor or Claude is fine because you still understand the code. But if you are working in an area you are not fully comfortable with, like me using FastAPI for ML models, you should read the AI generated code carefully, understand what it does, and only then use it.
The idea should stay simple. If the idea becomes too complex, it becomes harder to build and even harder to explain to judges. Simple ideas with clear impact usually work much better.
And finally, hackathons are way more fun when you go with people who actually know how to code and can build things together. When the team works well, you not only enjoy the hackathon more but you also have a much better chance of winning.

Apart from all that, the hackathon was really fun. It was hectic and losing felt pretty bad, but it taught me a few things. I realized the small mistakes I should never repeat.

I honestly get annoyed at myself for these silly mistakes because I know I am capable of winning these hackathons. Sometimes it’s just these small things that stop it from happening.

From now on I will try to avoid these mistakes, learn from them, and hopefully turn them into wins in the next hackathons.

Paper Viewer Website

Also, if you remember, in the last newsletter I mentioned the website I made for first year students to access their midterm papers. It’s still running and the response has been crazy.

The site got more than 12,000 views, which I didn’t expect at all. Around 80 to 90 percent of the first years in my college ended up using it, and the stats honestly look amazing.

At the end I just want to say it was a really weird week. It reminded me how strange life is. Nothing always stays up, it goes down too. Just because I won one hackathon doesn’t mean I will win the next one. Winning gives confidence, but life keeps balancing things out.

You can’t stay at the peak forever. You reach a peak, then you work again and hope the next one is even higher. That’s why staying humble matters. If you’re not, life usually finds a way to humble you anyway.

I’m still trying to figure out how to improve and what to do better next time. I’m just trying my best. I also wanted to be honest about what’s happening. I hate saying that I lost. I’ve been coding for seven years and still losing sometimes feels bad, but that’s part of the journey and there’s no skipping it.