This hackathon made us stop coding and start thinking.

We thought this hackathon would be about coding. It turned out to be about thinking. DEVTrails2026 #Hackathon #Learning #BuildInPublic I’m a CSE student, and recently our team — DevTrio — got a problem statement that didn’t feel like a normal assignment. It wasn’t like “build a website” or “create an app.” It was more like… understand a real problem and figure out what actually makes sense to build. The first few days were honestly confusing. We kept reading the problem again and again, thinking we got it… and then realizing we didn’t. Because there’s a difference between reading a problem and understanding the people behind it. So instead of jumping into coding, we slowed down. We started asking: Who are we building for? What does their daily life look like? What happens when things don’t go as planned? No code. Just discussions, doubts, and a lot of rethinking. That phase felt slow… but now it feels like the most important part. Once we got some clarity, things started moving faster.