An Ode to the real builders
Man, feels like I woke up and chose gratitude. But this has been on my mind for a couple of months now. I’ve been in the building ‘random cool things’ scene for my own joy for three years. Starting off with a simple web design task for a literary club, who knew it would be a journey with a billion ups and downs?
Right after meddling with React and some frontend stuff, in May 2021 I asked Harsh if we should win a hackathon. Mind you, I have zero ideas about how hackathons operate except for some knowledge about the SIH. The guy bailed on me as I waited for him to get online. Yikes. Time ran out but he never showed up. No worries, next event.
We built a small hack at Bhilai Hacks which was hosted on Devfolio. And this was the first time we came across this platform. Little did we know. One hack followed another, but one thing remained a constant. By last February I had built a total of seven projects at different Devfolio events including the fellowships.
Seems alright…right? Yeah. But it’s not the platform or the bounties but the folks who have been behind the platform. Online hackathons felt intimate and offline ones felt at home. So here’s a small list of stuff I got out of this journey with Devfolio:
- The Nights — Avicii // a fellow shared this gem to be rediscovered during the online part of the Polygon fellowship)
- Blinding Lights — Something about a Goose, don’t quite remember ;)
- Schwags — Hands down. Top-tier stuff.
- Coolest-wholesomest fellows as friends
- Insane memories. And a Polaroid photo too.
- Mentorship — Countless moments, screwups and conversations.
- Insane limits I’ve hit and pushed a little — tech and otherwise.
- A gallon of problems — Stuff I want to build more stuff for.
- My current job — not worrying about placements paid off!
- And the cutest diaries of all time!
I’m quite grateful to have received all the support, and schwags (mostly schwags hehe, jk). And I can bet on one fact, which is if you are building something, Devfolio will stand behind you however possible. Thanks for all the happiness and for building this community for builders! I hope all the greatness to y’all.
Signing off, Never Stop Building 🛠
