This is a submission for the 2025 New Year Writing challenge: Retro’ing and Debugging 2024.
2024 was crazy in terms of ideation, but that was it. An idea is how it started, and an idea is what it remained. We start extraordinary, but we end ordinary, and results come at the end no matter how you started—this is what I learned.
I saw peers going ahead of me with a relatively simple idea. I had it in Figma, and they had it in VS Code. I had an idea for a hackathon I was participating in but discarded it due to its simplicity and being too “obvious.” Long story short, that idea won, but I didn’t. Heres’s what I learned
1. Build IT
It is very important to ideate well, but it is equally important to get your hands dirty and start coding it out. Your idea will never seem perfect or complete to you, but your code can play the placebo all too well here, and you will end up with a product—and clarity about what you wanted all along. Even if you don’t know the tech stack well, use the charcuterie board of AI and just get started. A built-average idea is more likely to win hackathons than a great idea on paper.
2. Docs;The Holy Grail
Oh, the most underrated resource for budding developers and coders out there! This resource takes up your time, but the ROI is more effective and long-lasting than a YouTuber explaining on their Mac. Documentation contains extensive and complete details of each functionality and feature that the stack has to offer. And who is more credible than the developers themselves who create it? The source is excellent as well.
Not only that, but retention of content through this self-learning method sticks for much longer. It comes in very handy during debugging since you understand the process, how it starts, and you aren’t relying on spoon-fed commands.
3. No Idea is Big or Small
Lastly, register and go for it. Do not judge your own idea based on its scale—there are already people and events in place for that. It may be obvious to you, but the same might not be true for other people. The hardest of problems often require the simplest of solutions, and simplicity can be obvious. Prototype it well, and have supporting elements like images, user flow, etc., to really bring out that clarity. Remember, beauty lies in simplicity.
Challenges Worth Your Attention
After this, it isn’t hard to tell that all these lessons came after overcoming challenges in all their glory. But there are a few that deserve your urgent attention and tending to:
1. Communication
When you are working in a team, especially for creating a product, you need to be very thorough with your idea, and your vision, and be firm about what goes in and what doesn’t. It’s very easy to deviate in a group, so you need to communicate clearly throughout the entire lifecycle of your idea.
2. Sprinkling AI Everywhere
Adding AI to everything is not helpful unless you know how to do it. This may seem trivial, but AI chatbots are now common, and they won’t make your project artificially intelligent. It’s time to go beyond this rhetoric—work with transformers and pre-built models to really get into that league.
3. Pitch Your Pitch
You should know how to sell your idea—or at least explain it well to a third party. An outsider’s perspective is very helpful in gaining that user POV and identifying shortcomings that can enhance your project. This can make it stand out from the crowd who otherwise just created something for robots—a fixed input to get an expected output.
These learnings helped me win competitions, and hackathons, and create great projects. I hope they help you too!
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