I blamed me though, and that i had ruined the hardware somehow.
You can ruin the hardware by doing things like having an input button wired to a pin and ground, setting that pin to an output and high, then pushing the button. That puts a short circuit on the output pin and will cause overheating. But once the hardware is removed it should not get hot. If it gets hot with nothing attached then you have blown the chip by doing something like putting 12V on the +5V pin or something similar.