Inside a 24-hour ‘vibe coding’ hackathon–listed here are my largest takeaways

I wish to spend most of my weekends taking exercise courses with mates, exploring new eating places or vegging out on the sofa with a film on. The previous weekend, nonetheless, was distinctive. As an alternative of the same old routine, I selected to immerse myself in a 24-hour ‘vibe coding’ hackathon.

I attended one in every of Singapore’s largest in-person hackathons ever, which was sponsored and supported by AI heavyweights from all over the world together with OpenAI, Cursor, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and extra.

The occasion came about on a college campus from about 9 a.m. on Saturday to Sunday midday. Over 400 folks participated, starting from extremely skilled engineers to first-timers. The aim was easy: construct one thing from scratch with the assistance of synthetic intelligence.

“Use your creativeness… construct one thing unhinged. Construct one thing wacky,” stated Agrim Singh, one of many occasion’s organizers and the co-founder of Niyam AI.

A number of groups actually took that recommendation to coronary heart.

Some standout tasks included F**Yu.AI, an AI-enabled productiveness app that “bullies you into greatness,” by calling customers on their cell telephones to yell at them to finish duties, and RizzedIn, a relationship web site that helps join “career-minded people.”

By the tip of the weekend, about 150 tasks have been submitted. The winner – an AI-powered whiteboarding software that enables customers to attract utilizing simply their hand actions tracked by a webcam — took house prizes price over $50,000 Singapore {dollars} (about $39,000).

The second and third place winners created a human-versus-AI velocity recreation and a “Netflix for company coaching” software that makes compliance coaching movies extra partaking for workers.

As somebody with no technical background, I used to be nervous getting into the occasion however excited to satisfy the hackathon neighborhood. I knew I needed to optimize my probabilities of constructing one thing efficiently by teaming up with individuals who have been rather more technical than me.

Via Discord, I discovered my staff for the hackathon: Gabrielle Ong who has a product growth background, Aung Maung who has a deep tech background, Ninna Cao who has a product design background and Jay Chen who has a software program engineering background. What did I supply? Concepts, my storytelling skills and vibes.

We bonded over a shared need to protect the legacies of our grandparents. So, we constructed Heirloom — a digital time capsule which can be utilized to seize and retailer household tales and recipes, in order that they are often handed down for generations to return.

We spent all of Saturday engaged on remodeling our thought right into a product. A few of us stayed up your entire night time engaged on the challenge — whereas others (me) sadly did not have the stamina to take action.

After I received again to the campus on Sunday morning, I noticed folks sleeping on benches, on the ground and nearly all over the place, whereas others have been nonetheless making final minute changes earlier than submitting their tasks for judging.

An estimated 70 folks stayed in a single day to work on their challenge, stated Sherry Jiang, one of many occasion organizers and the co-founder of fintech app Peek.

“We have been attempting to do a little bit of a rely … And we discovered folks in like random lecture rooms. It was simply the funniest [thing] … It was like catching wild Pokemon,” stated Jiang.

Richard Lee, who constructed a gamified habits-training app Orbie alongside his teammate Amanda Lau Shernin, slept for under about half an hour on the ground of a lecture corridor. He had prior developer expertise and is aware of coding languages like Python and SQL.

When requested why he selected to hitch the hackathon, he stated: “I took it as a private problem to see [what] might really be carried out inside 24 hours … [and to] see how far vibe coding has superior,” stated Lee. He additionally thought it could be an incredible place to get inspiration.

“It is like a gathering of builders … who do not simply study, however do,” Lee added. “It is virtually like coaching for a startup, proper? Successfully, you simply must focus and get one thing carried out.”

By the tip of the weekend, Lee says that though the hackathon was simply 24 hours, he felt like he had “considerably upgraded” his expertise.

The hackathon’s organizers stated their aim was to reinvigorate the builder neighborhood in Singapore. There is a feeling amongst many individuals within the house that the hackathon scene has light from its heyday, co-organizer Jiang stated.

Fellow organizer Singh agreed, writing on a LinkedIn publish that “the Singapore hackathon scene misplaced its soul.”

Singh, who has been attending hackathons since 2013, noticed that such occasions used to heart hackers and builders making “one thing that labored”, as a substitute of “panels or sponsorship decks or picture ops.”

“Now? Most AI occasions right here really feel hole. Panels by individuals who’ve by no means touched the tech. ‘Thought management’ with no sensible weight. Folks pretending to construct, or worse, extracting income from the hype with out caring in regards to the ecosystem,” he wrote.

With the development of AI, the startup panorama and software program engineering business has modified massively — it is now simpler for folks with non-technical backgrounds to construct tech merchandise themselves.

Out of the entire contributors, about half of them have been fully new to hackathons, Jiang stated.

Jiang additionally identified that some contributors who had discovered how one can vibe code only a couple weeks in the past had positioned “fairly excessive” on the occasion’s rankings, beating skilled engineers.

“It is a little bit of a speculation I’ve … I really feel like individuals who [have a good] product sense and good style and know how one can place their merchandise are beginning to do very well at these hackathons as a result of engineering is lots simpler now,” she stated. “We have lowered the barrier, however raised the bar.”

“The time to construct is way shorter than [before]. I feel it is actually a lot simpler for builders or technical folks, and even non-technical folks to construct a prototype, and successfully get to market,” stated hackathon participant Lee.

Moreover, Lee and Jiang agree that each startup groups and company developer groups will doubtless change into smaller now that these AI-assisted coding instruments are available on the market.

With that stated, it is nonetheless very useful to have some background on software program engineering, as this can carry you to the end line. Folks will nonetheless must know how one can consider code when it comes to its basic logic and perceive how one can deal with points in code, hackathon participant Lee stated.

Finally, AI fashions are enhancing so rapidly that if engineers aren’t upskilling constantly on the instruments and staying updated, they’re liable to turning into redundant, he added.