HAMMERWARS 2025: a postmortem

I hosted HammerWars 2025 last November , Purdue’s biggest programming contest with 100+ participants from Purdue WL, Indy and UIUC and I’ve been thinking about recording the process long before the event. I think it’s fair to say this is my highest-impact work to date, and this post could be helpful for organizers in similar straits. It’s also for my own reflection. Though I take responsibility…