Wheel Reinvention Jam
September 22-28, 2025. In 19 days.
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The Wheel Reinvention Jam is a one-week jam to build software from scratch.

Inspired by Handmade Hero, we believe in the power of reinventing the wheel. It's an opportunity to grow as a programmer, to question long-held assumptions, and to discover how simple and effective software can be. The Wheel Reinvention Jam is a chance to start your own Handmade project and see where it takes you.

Why reinvent the wheel?

Reinventing the wheel is in the DNA of the Handmade community. First of all, it's fun! But there are so many reasons why reinventing the wheel is important, not just for individual programmers, but for the whole software industry:

  • It builds deeper understanding. There is no better way for a programmer to learn than by writing things from scratch. Making something by hand teaches you the reality of the problem in a way no book or course can convey. Often, the real insight is in the details.
  • It reveals the ground truth. It is often shocking how easy it is to reinvent the wheel. Software is so bloated and complicated that people often forget what is actually required to solve the problem. Reinventing the wheel reminds us of this ground truth and sharpens our outlook on software.
  • It's how progress is made. Rethinking assumptions is just good engineering. Legacy software is constantly being replaced by software that explores new techniques or takes advantage of new hardware. LLVM started as a student project and now powers most compilers today. JangaFX was founded by a Handmade community member and is now the industry leader in smoke and fire simulation. Sometimes wheels just need to be reinvented.

Every important software project begins as a simple prototype. So take the opportunity to start something new!

Inspiration

Here's a sampling of interesting submissions to previous Wheel Reinvention Jams. For more inspiration, check out the #wishlist channel on Discord.

Perspective Drawing Visualizer is a tool created by a community member to help himself grow as an artist. (Demo)
ScreenBuddy is a dead-simple screen sharing application for Windows. (Demo)
Afforix Box is a physical device that can be used to activate and deactivate programs on your computer. (Video)
6502: The Spreadsheet is a reference manual, emulator, and code generator for the 6502 processor, all wrapped up in a single spreadsheet. (Demo)
ShapeUp is a 3D editor that uses signed distance fields to make it easy to edit solid geometry. (Video)
ZUnderglow is a tool for programming RGB lighting and synchronizing it to music. (Demo)
Scroll is an experimental take on word processing where documents are edited structurally. Complete with PDF export! (Demo)
badpaint is an image corruption editor that makes it easy to create glitched images. (Demo)
Database Explorer is a visual dataflow editor for SQL databases, which produces real SQL queries using a flexible visual interface. (Demo)
Bifold Text is an experimental code format, editor, and runtime environment that asks the question: what if each line of code was two lines of code? (Demo)
Aura is a custom build server integrated with a custom source control system. (Demo)
netsim is a network simulator that runs in a browser, designed for education.
SDF Atlas is an experimental tool for authoring SDF shapes, without ever touching a line of shader code. (Demo)
Lil UEFI is a simple header-only C library for creating UEFI programs. (Demo)
Twitter Thread Graph Explorer allows you to explore a user's Twitter history when it is full of links and self-references. (Demo)

Your submission

Submissions open one week before the jam.

Your submission will be in the form of a Handmade Network project. The project also allows you to share updates throughout the jam, either directly from this website or from the Handmade Network Discord.

How to participate

Join the community.

Join the Handmade Network Discord to connect with other jammers. Use the time before the jam to brainstorm project ideas, and consider teaming up with others from the community.

Create your project submission.

Create a Handmade Network project. This project will act as your submission and can be used to share your work in progress throughout the jam.

Jam.

Spend the week and weekend working on your project. You are free to dedicate as much or as little time to your project as you want, but the general expectation is to jam in the evenings during the week and jam all day on the weekend. Regardless, we give you a full week so that you have time to put together an interesting result—and time to sleep on tricky problems.

As you go, make sure to share your work in #project-showcase and #workspace on Discord. You can use our tagging system to automatically link your posts to your Handmade Network project.

Submit your work!

Your Handmade Network project is your submission. Make sure to give your project a meaningful title and description, and make sure to explain the project's goals.

All submissions

No projects have been submitted yet.