Used PHP in a Hackathon was made fun of and it made me feel really shitty.

Everyone ended up using Node.js/React/Redux and MongoDB. We ended up using PHP7.2 and MariaDB.

When people came by to check our project out everyone pointed out we were using PHP and made really snarky comments about it. Felt really shitty and just wanted to up and leave that hackathon due to that.

That feeling still lingers with me... like hmm maybe I shouldn't have joined this.

Hackathons are for normies showcasing their cool hax0r skills to their friends. There is little productive work done there, but rare.