See how software works on the inside.
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The X-Ray Jam is a one-week jam where we look inside the software we use every day.

Computers are black boxes. The more you learn about programming, the more you become aware of the incredible complexity of modern software. Our programs run atop layers and layers of supporting software, and yet these layers are invisible to us.

If we intend to make high-quality software, we need to see through those layers. We must learn how systems work and build tools to show us those inner workings. The X-Ray Jam is a chance to do that.

What does X-ray mean?

It means investigating how software works "on the inside". What exactly this means is up to you, but it could mean:

  • A program that lets you see and record all the window messages your program receives from the OS
  • Investigating why your "favorite" productivity tool is so slow to open (what is it doing behind the splash screen?)
  • Recording and replaying the behavior of a heap allocator, to see how well it organizes allocations
  • A tool that uses packet capture to log and summarize all network activity on your machine (between processes and to the internet)
  • Hacking up a compiler to make it log information about heuristics and optimizations
  • Writing a virus for an old version of Windows to understand the vulnerabilities it exploited
  • Making some kind of Bluetooth logger to find all the Bluetooth devices in your house

If in doubt, start with something familiar and then go one level deeper. Your submission to the X-Ray Jam can be either a program or a blog post.

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.

After the jam starts, 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.

Then get started! Share screenshots and videos in #project-showcase and #jam on Discord, or directly from your project page.

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 #jam 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.

New this year: Projects now will soon support blog posts, giving you a great way to post richer write-ups for your project and to allow others to comment and discuss.

Why X-Ray?

The X-Ray Jam is a new spin on our Visibility Jam from past years, and a complement to our flagship Wheel Reinvention Jam. The purpose of both jams is to push the Handmade community to build better software by understanding our systems and leveraging that knowledge to build fundamentally better software.

These two jams push us into divergent and convergent thinking. The X-Ray Jam helps us understand our systems, what problems they are solving, and how they solve them. The Wheel Reinvention Jam lets us apply that knowledge to build software that isn't just faster or lighter, but fundamentally different from (and hopefully better than!) the status quo.

And of course, we can all reap the benefits of better tooling. The X-Ray Jam is designed to both expand our knowledge and give us better tools, which we can all use to be more productive with the systems we use every day.