'Vibe Coder' Who Doesn't Know How to Code Keeps Winning Hackathons in San Francisco (sfstandard.com) 73
An anonymous reader shared this report from the San Francisco Standard:
About an hour into my meeting with the undisputed hackathon king of San Francisco, Rene Turcios asked if I wanted to smoke a joint with him. I politely declined, but his offer hardly surprised me. Turcios has built a reputation as a cannabis-loving former professional Yu-Gi-Oh! player who resells Labubus out of his Tenderloin apartment when he's not busy attending nearly every hackathon happening in the city. Since 2023, Turcios, 29, has attended more than 200 events, where he's won cash, software credits, and clout. "I'm always hustling," he said.
The craziest part: he doesn't even know how to code.
"Rene is the original vibe coder," said RJ Moscardon, a friend and fellow hacker who watched Turcios win second place at his first-ever hackathon at the AGI House mansion in Hillsborough. "All the engineers with prestigious degrees scoffed at him at first. But now they're all doing exactly the same thing...." Turcios was vibe coding long before the technique had a name — and was looked down upon by longtime hackers for using AI. But as Tiger Woods once said, "Winning takes care of everything...."
Instead of vigorously coding until the deadline, he finished his projects hours early by getting AI to do the technical work for him. "I didn't write a single line of code," Turcios said of his first hackathon where he prompted ChatGPT using plain English to generate a program that can convert any song into a lo-fi version. When the organizers announced Turcios had won second place, he screamed in celebration.... "I realized that I could compete with people who have degrees and fancy jobs...."
Turcios is now known for being able to build anything quickly. Businesses reach out to him to contract out projects that would take software engineering teams weeks — and he delivers in hours. He's even started running workshops to teach non-technical groups and experienced software engineers how to get the most out of AI for coding.
"He grew up in Missouri to parents who worked in an international circus, taming bears and lions..."
The craziest part: he doesn't even know how to code.
"Rene is the original vibe coder," said RJ Moscardon, a friend and fellow hacker who watched Turcios win second place at his first-ever hackathon at the AGI House mansion in Hillsborough. "All the engineers with prestigious degrees scoffed at him at first. But now they're all doing exactly the same thing...." Turcios was vibe coding long before the technique had a name — and was looked down upon by longtime hackers for using AI. But as Tiger Woods once said, "Winning takes care of everything...."
Instead of vigorously coding until the deadline, he finished his projects hours early by getting AI to do the technical work for him. "I didn't write a single line of code," Turcios said of his first hackathon where he prompted ChatGPT using plain English to generate a program that can convert any song into a lo-fi version. When the organizers announced Turcios had won second place, he screamed in celebration.... "I realized that I could compete with people who have degrees and fancy jobs...."
Turcios is now known for being able to build anything quickly. Businesses reach out to him to contract out projects that would take software engineering teams weeks — and he delivers in hours. He's even started running workshops to teach non-technical groups and experienced software engineers how to get the most out of AI for coding.
"He grew up in Missouri to parents who worked in an international circus, taming bears and lions..."
First, I would need someone to explain lo-fi music (Score:2)
Re: First, I would need someone to explain lo-fi m (Score:5, Informative)
It's mostly effects on top of a lowered tempo. Crush the bit rate, add multiple kinds of reverb, modulate a tape delay to give a warble, EQ and enhance the mids. Optionally strip out the lows and add a new beat on top that reenforces the low tempo.
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Re: First, I would need someone to explain lo-fi (Score:2)
Re: First, I would need someone to explain lo-fi (Score:3)
The writing is on the wall (Score:5, Interesting)
I will still code by hand for fun. But the industry has changed. And everyday you will face increasing pressure to compete against people like him in your career.
I see no way to pump the brakes on this. Let alone to reverse it.
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"I see no way to pump the brakes on this. Let alone to reverse it."
As if you're looking. You're trying to profit from it, you don't care what the outcome is.
Re:The writing is on the wall (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: The writing is on the wall (Score:2)
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A hackathon is the definition of building a POC. In business, that's step 1 of 10,000.
In the software development life cycle, coding is just a small fraction of the effort. Overall, "vibe coding" can only reduce that life cycle time by maybe 5-10%.
AI coding is real, and it's eventually going to transform how we build software. But there is a long, long road ahead before that starts putting software developers out of business.
Re: The writing is on the wall (Score:1)
Re: The writing is on the wall (Score:2)
I stopped writing code. Vibing is the new way of programming.
There's no competing (Score:2)
what we need to be doing is transitioning from a competitive society to a cooperative one but screw that. Too much pride and too much lizard brain. Also too much moral panic
Website (Score:5, Informative)
Here is his code for the winning hackathon entry he made [replit.com]. It uses Gradio, which is a library I was unaware of, but looks interesting.
His linkedin [linkedin.com] has the following skills listed:
Deep Learning Neural Networks Machine Learning Python (Programming Language) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Science C++ Software Development Venture Capital Networking Pattern Recognition unreal engine Product Management TensorFlow PyTorch
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So fraud is one of his skills. Not that we can't tell that already. 29 year old venture capitalist. Love to see his TensorFlow skills.
Re: Website (Score:4, Insightful)
Wonder if he instructed AI to write that praise article, too.
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Of course! In for a penny, in for a pound!
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Here is his website
huh, for me, that site is broken on so many levels, I wouldn't know where to start... (macOS, Safari, both new neta versions, same happens on latest release versions)
the toolbar is ... animated? and items move around, what the hell?
the card grow when hovered over, but are clipped to the outside of the window
if the mouse cursor is the the left or right of the main content, scrolling doesn't work
vertical spacing is crazy, waaay too much
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That's the norm now, so many web sites won't scroll with up/down arrow keys or page up/down keys, you have to use the mouse thumbwheel or drag a scrollbar. :(
Perfect examples of "good enough" (Score:2)
Who cares!
I watched Idiocracy last night. It's not a satire, it's a documentary.
We have a moron celebrity with the nuclear codes now, a "Gentlemen's Latte" can't be far away.
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Ah but did you notice? President Dwayne Herbert Elionzo mountain dew Commacho values experts, raises that not sure is the smartest guy in the world and tries to get him to fix the problems. Sure it goes wrong but even so.
I'm this reality, the president thinks he's the smartest person in the world and experts are shunned.
You can do amazing things... (Score:5, Interesting)
I met a guy a couple of weeks ago: he's a professional software PM, but doesn't himself know how to program. So he is presumably good with requirements, knows generally how software development works, etc..
We live in a wine region, and he has an extensive wine cellar. He wanted an iOS app to keep track of what he has, what he thought of each bottle, etc.. Using a collection of various AIs (because sometimes one would get stuck), and over the course of 2-3 months, he gradually built an app. He showed it to me, and I can only say "wow". It's a lot more than a CRUD app - it includes features like import/export, like taking a picture of a label, automatically extracting text bits for dropdowns, so that you can manually choose which bit of text is the winery, which bit is the name of the wine, etc.. Very slick, very professional, very feature rich. A talented programmer could achieve the same thing in the same time frame. A mediocre programmer - no chance.
Again, the guy understands the software development process. In some sense, he was treating the AIs like programmers, and directing them the way he directs a human team. But still - to create a professional quality app, fiddling around part-time for a couple of months? Without writing, or even correcting any code yourself? Wow.
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But still - to create a professional quality app
the game has indeed changed but i would take "professional quality" with a grain of salt in this context. yes, ai is an incredible boost to productivity, and an enabler for people without engineering knowledge, but an app isn't "professional" because of its looks or functionality. it also has to be secure, performant, maintainable, possibly scalable and interoperating.
behind these new careers and any of these geniuses (whose genius i don't dispute for a second) you'll still need a few engineers in the backg
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... but an app isn't "professional" because of its looks or functionality. it also has to be secure, performant, maintainable, possibly scalable and interoperating.
So I take it you've never downloaded an iOS or Android app from a major company that was by definition "professional" and yet met none of your requirements?
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so you didn't even read to the end of a 3 short paragraph post to make a redundant comment that only shows you cannot read and otherwise doesn't contribute anything? feeling better now?
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I met a guy a couple of weeks ago: he's a professional software PM, but doesn't himself know how to program.
That's normal for PMs, minimal to no coding skills. That is not their job.
shallow online footprint (Score:5, Interesting)
For such a rock star vibe coder his online footprint sure it shallow. No proof of his abilities or victories anywhere.
Re:shallow online footprint (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting point. Fake person hired to promote the myth of LLMs being the best thing ever? And probably cheating and lying? Sounds plausible.
Re: shallow online footprint (Score:1)
but is this winning? (Score:5, Informative)
'But as Tiger Woods once said, "Winning takes care of everything...."'
Does winning by cheating take care of everything?
Since when is using another coding source in a coding competition NOT cheating?
"I realized that I could compete with people who have degrees and fancy jobs...."
You're not competing, you're cheating the rules. The game is being invalidated by a tool, the cheater is not competing at all.
"Turcios is now known for being able to build anything quickly."
That is false, this guy can build nothing that GPT cannot already reconstruct. He admits he provides no coding capability on his own.
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Does winning by cheating take care of everything?
Cheating worked for Tom Brady.
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But not for Barry Bonds, who has as many World Series championships and as much MLB hall of fame eligibility as you and I do.
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'But as Tiger Woods once said, "Winning takes care of everything...."'
Does winning by cheating take care of everything?
Since when is using another coding source in a coding competition NOT cheating?
I guess it depends on the rules to decide what is cheating. If the rules simply require delivering a product by a certain time, is using AI cheating any more than using a library to perform tasks instead of coding it yourself, or not coding in machine language? I get the concern that all of a sudden the skills developed over time are suddenly threatened by a tool that means someone without that expereince can compete effectively with you, but technology has done that to occupations forever.
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"Does winning by cheating take care of everything?" -The French at Crecy, regarding the English longbow.
The drone warfare in Ukraine is eliciting similar reactions from infantrymen.
The only rule: Win.
Indication of bad hackathon questions (Score:5, Interesting)
This would be similar to a Math Olympiads giving participants questions of multiplying 20-digits numbers. Or weight lifting in the Olympics where one contestant wore a powered exoskeleton to help lift the weight.
It's no wonder in those cases a machine can do it better than humans, and it only demonstrated the poor level of organizers, that they were unable to come up with good worthy questions for the participants, rather than anything about such events itself.
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Indeed. This is not a triumph for vibe-"coding", but shows how badly these "Hackatons" have screwed up.
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Then the "hackatons" have always been screwed up - yet we have been celebrating their results for *years*.
As far as I can tell the formats haven't changed.
I think you're just jealous that someone doing vibe coding is doing soooo well in these competitions.
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I think you're just jealous that someone doing vibe coding is doing soooo well in these competitions.
I think you are projecting. Because I could not care less about any "Hackaton".
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Even supposing the tasks were well-constructed and challenging, a hackathon by nature, is asking programmers to build a POC. That's the easy part of software development, and it's the part AI is good at.
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You put that as if LLMs could write better code faster than programmers, outside of contests.
Sure, you don't bring a Lamborghini to run a marathon, because everyone already knows that cars run faster than athletes; that's why commuters are stuck in traffic for hours every day.
Similarly, computing machinery has replaced human computers, because machines are faster and more precise. And autocode/compilers have replaced machine code programmers, for the same reason.
So if you think we need a rule that prevents
Vibe coding was already popular 30-40 years ago (Score:2, Insightful)
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Returning to a world of idiots and savants (Score:2)
To be analytical about it, Yu-gi-oh is a fairly complex game requiring, analytical ability, planning, strategy. My kid beat me everytime I tried... then again, I wasn't nearly as interested or motivated as he was.
That says something about "Hackatons" (Score:5, Insightful)
Not about "vibe coding". Oh, and real-world coding does not come with winning awards, but with requirements regarding reliability, usability, security, maintainability, regulatory compliance and some others.
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Typically they do the hard stuff.
So yeah there is still going to be somebody to go look over the code and make sure it's functional and secure. But that person is going to be doing a hell of a lot less work.
I think it's safe to say about half of White collar workers are going to be permanently unemployed within the next 5 years. If not sooner.
That's going to hit blue collar workers like a truck. Because white collar workers higher blue color worker
Coding? (Score:3)
So "coding" is now assembling modules to spit out what you want. ..... That's not coding. The goal post hasn't moved, it's over in the next county. STOP PRETENDING THAT AI IS REAL. Slashdot readers (should) know better.
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assembling modules to spit out what you want. ..... That's not coding.
We used to call that a "shell script".
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>> "coding" is now assembling modules to spit out what you want
Yes and it has been that way for a long time. Most programs have a list of imports at the top and the rest of the code uses the API of those packages to accomplish what you wanted. LLM's are familiar with those API's and can perform the assembly for you, a big time saver.
Single-functionality apps are easy (Score:5, Informative)
So he's AI-built an app that takes some input, processes audio and spits out the result while having a fairly well-described win condition.
This is entry-level shit.
Now, go and show me how your AI skills fare in a multi-million lines codebases of a complex commercial system on a large team. An environment of competing priorities where you have to satisfy multivariate conditions (without compromise on any), support legacy systems while keeping the app readable and maintainable.
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Not only that, but in a hackathon, contestants build a proof of concept. That's the easy, and smallest, part of building software. And it's the part AI is good at. Developing the POC into real software, takes 99% of the time and effort, and AI sucks at that part of the job.
Neat! (Score:2)
No doubt LLMs can eliminate tedious parts of coding when building a tiny app. Hackathons seem like a good target.
Perspective matters. So does actual skill. (Score:3)
No doubt LLMs can eliminate tedious parts of coding when building a tiny app. Hackathons seem like a good target.
Depends on how you look at it.
A hackathon allowing the use of AI/LLMs is measuring competitor skill about as well as a chess tournament is by allowing the use of engines.
Hacking the hackathon, isn’t really self-serving. Kind of like robbing your own bank.
"No no, you don't get the reward" (Score:3)
"Your AI does. It did the work. You just ordered it. But since we don't allow artificial participants, you'll get nothing and like it."
because hacking is not how professionals code (Score:2)
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Re: because hacking is not how professionals code (Score:2)
Someone remind Boeing.
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do you think (Score:1)
He's ever written a test suite for his code?
Done scalability assessments?
Security audits?
It's really easy to blast out a one-off that solves the problem... but production quality code is so much more and requires a deep understanding to even begin to know if a piece of code is quality or not--even if it does happen to solve the immediate problem.
Power tools (Score:3)
> "All the engineers with prestigious degrees scoffed at him at first. But now they're all doing exactly the same thing...."
Yeah, that's most peoples' reactions when they see that they can replace manual labour with a power tool.
The 'real world' of software development does not involve spending 100% of your time shitting out prototypes and toy projects in a 48-hour timebox, so those engineers with prestigious degrees (and even the ones without prestigious degrees) are still going to be the ones called in to build the whole house while this nitwit is stuck making cutting boards and step stools out of kits using someone else's tools at the local woodworking shop.
Tech Dept (Score:3)
Anyone who hires this guy is instantly creating tech debt that will cost them more than a real application would have when it needs to be improved, updated or basically any modification.
And imagine if you had to audit this thing.
What we need to be doing (Score:2)
First we need strong unions for higher wages for the remaining jobs so that those people can drive a service sector economy with their purchases.
Next we need ludicrously high taxes on the rich in order to control their power and to get the resources we need.
Then we need enormous government programs. Trillions and trillions of dollars of government infrastructu