Hackathons. 10 years later.
2025-06-23
I thought hackathons were over.
In 2015, as a creative developer at Audible/Amazon, my team of six won a nationwide hackathon. We created a web app player for Audible using Facebook/Meta’s React, a new technology at the time. We quickly prototyped and built a production model within 72 hours.
We also created “plugins” within the web app. Obsessed with the Philips Hue/Zigby SDK, I created an applet that synced children’s storybooks to the lighting system. After a day of research, testing, and debugging, I had a working model. Whenever a color or nature reference was mentioned, the lights shifted gradients and brightness to visualize the story in the user’s room.
We celebrated our accomplishment and hoped Audible/Amazon would release the project.
The next day, we were informed that the judges who voted for our entry were let go. Amazon didn’t want our project to proceed.
Ten years later, I’m applying to another hackathon.
- I’m excited to build in the digital space after working analog as a baker for the last four years.
- I’ve adopted the latest tools to optimize process and cost efficiency, like React did in 2015.
- I’m working alone (and with a chatbot with Bolt/Claude/CoPilot).
A friend in cyber-security told me about Bolt. His team made an app in 4 hours, which his lead developers took 7 months to make.
I’m amazed by my rapid progress in creating apps with the AI Chatbot apps. My developer knowledge helps, but the ability to conceptualize and launch apps is shocking.
Before, I outsourced back-end engineers and had a 50% success rate. Now, with a Supabase database and a Netlify site, I’ve created a recipe book, a Bitcoin DCA predictive dashboard, and a personal website for my mom’s business. It took only 8 hours of actual work and 15 prompts/manual code editing.
The “10x Developer” theory with AI is true:
- Software development is more creative and less mentally taxing.
- Not everyone needs to code; everyone needs to convey ideas.
- Products and companies have a shorter life cycle: creation to valuation to expiration.
I’m still working a full-time job, but debugging, finding broken dependencies, and perfecting the design and interaction experience are gone.