HackHW hosted its 10th anniversary of Hackathon overnight in Mudd Library Feb 15-16. Over the two days, students could choose up to five people to help them design a website, game or app based on this year’s theme,” You are Your Enemy”.
Participants were able to play board games, watch movies and received duck-shaped lights for attending. In the afternoon of the second day, school alumnit came to judge the projects, announce winners and give out prizes ranging from drones to Lego sets.
Math Teacher Andy Stout said that he always looks forward to Hackathon because of the quality of projects submitted.
“Students often produce college-level projects,” Stout said. “This year I wasn’t disappointed, with projects well beyond what I’m capable of accomplishing myself.”
Hackathon is open to grades eight through 12 and allows all grades to work together. Stout said that he likes meeting younger students, not only to learn about them, but also to see them connect with upperclassmen.
“I always look forward to getting to meet the middle schoolers I’ll be seeing on campus next year and later,” Stout said. “ I had a great time talking to an eighth grader, Lu Schwarzman, attending her first Hackathon, and seeing the eighth graders connect with the seniors.”
For the past two years, Mudd Library has been unable to host the event due to renovations. Hackathon organizer John Xu ’25 said although the Hackathon has struggled in past years due to the closure and the pandemic, the event’s 10th anniversary improved the event’s atmosphere and the number of attendees.
“As this is the 10-year anniversary of this event, we expected this event to be a rejuvenation of the HackHW spirit as a variety of factors have prevented us from hosting the most complete form of the HW Hackathon in some previous years,” Xu said. “Library renovations and the pandemic have prevented us from using necessary facilities and hindered our efforts in encouraging participant sign-ups.”
At the end of the Hackathon, Xu and others passed out duck lights. Xu said that the duck lights are related to programming, and he hopes the toys willremind all the people who came of programming concepts.
“[We found] duck-shaped lights online that seemed particularly adorable,” Xu said. “We unofficially adopted these duck lights as our mascot in reference to rubber-duck debugging. By gifting lights free to all participants, we hope to remind participants of the importance of rationally viewing challenges and clearly framing problems.”
Stout said that one of his favorite parts of Hackathon was staying up and playing games with students.
“I always look forward to playing board games and card games with students, and that also didn’t disappoint, with six back-to-back different games,” Stout said. “This included what is always a great Time’s Up game.”
Jacob Massey ’25 said that he always enjoys coming to Hackathon to play games with friends.
“I wanted to sign up this year because I like coding and I like board games, and there’s a lot of both at the Hackathon,” Massey said. “I did not do much coding at this Hackathon, to be honest. Mostly just board games, movies and gossiping.”
