The first time I heard the word “hackathon” was in 2026.
Until then, I was at the stage of:
“What’s a hackathon?”
When I first heard it, the word itself felt kind of hard to remember.
But then I was told it was a combination of
and I thought:
Oh, I see.
Suddenly, it became much easier to remember.
Focusing for a short period of time and building something together.
It really is a little like a marathon.
What does “hack” even mean?
At first, when I heard “hack,” I had a slightly dangerous image in mind — like hacking, or breaking into computers without permission.
But the “hack” in hackathon isn’t only about that.
Here, it’s used more in the sense of
building something creatively, using technology and ideas.
Add the image of a marathon — focusing on something for a long stretch of time — and you get
Hackathon.
Once I knew what the word meant, it made a lot of sense to me.
Hackathons weren’t born with AI
Since I only learned about hackathons in 2026,
I had a vague idea that
“Maybe it’s a new kind of event that appeared because AI became popular.”
But when I looked into it, that wasn’t the case at all.
The word “hackathon” was already being used at least as early as 1999.
The open-source project OpenBSD also held a hackathon in June 1999.
In other words,
it had existed for more than 20 years before I even learned the word.
That surprised me a little.
For me, it was a world that suddenly appeared in 2026, but that world itself had been there for a long time.
Early hackathons were, of course, a world of engineers
The early OpenBSD Hackathons were places where developers got together and actually wrote code to develop software.
I think the atmosphere was quite different from today’s events, which are joined by a wide range of people, including
designers,
people thinking about business,
people in marketing,
students,
and non-engineers.
Of course, there are still plenty of hackathons for highly skilled engineers today.
Even at the events I joined, there were definitely participants who made me think:
“This person is on a completely different level from me.”
So I’m not saying that
“anyone can easily join a hackathon these days.”
It really depends on the event.
Still, I think the ways in have been opening up
On the other hand, the “tools for building things” have changed a lot compared to the past.
First, there’s low-code and no-code.
It became possible to build apps by combining parts on the screen, without having to write all the code yourself.
And now, there’s generative AI.
When I explain in plain words,
“I want to make something like this,”
AI writes code,
fixes errors,
and explains what to do next.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can do everything with it alone.
AI makes mistakes too, and sometimes I get stuck because I don’t understand something.
But
“I can’t write code” no longer means “I can’t build anything.”
For me, that was a really big deal.
Even the term “vibe coding” has appeared
In February 2025, Andrej Karpathy posted on X using the term “vibe coding.”
It refers to a style of development where you give AI instructions in natural language and have it write code for you as you go.
When I first heard the term, I thought:
Is it really okay to build things like that?
But in practice, I’ve started building apps with AI myself.
In my case, I have ChatGPT write prompts for me, and then I copy and paste them into Claude Code as I build.
I don’t understand all of the code.
But I
think about what I want to make,
tell the AI,
look at what comes out,
ask it to fix things if they’re wrong,
and try again.
Little by little, it takes shape that way.
Hackathons don’t just need code, either
After actually joining a few AI hackathons,
I found that it wasn’t only people who write code who were needed.
People who think about what to make.
People who think about users’ problems.
People who organize ideas.
People who present.
People who communicate in English.
People who bring the team together.
Of course, people with technical skills are strong.
I think there’s no doubt about that.
But I’ve also stopped thinking,
“I’m not an engineer, so I can’t do anything.”
I’m not an engineer myself.
Even so, I join teams,
think things through together,
use AI,
build something,
and take part all the way through the presentation.
A few days before, I didn’t even know the word “hackathon”
This is the part I find most interesting.
When I joined my first AI hackathon, just a few days before,
I didn’t even know the word “hackathon.”
And of course, the venue was full of real engineers.
A non-engineer like me
might stand out a little, though.
But I was still able to take part.
And after that, I joined another hackathon.
Before I knew it, I was looking around and thinking,
“What kind of hackathon is coming up next?”
They’ve been around for a long time, but now I can see a way in too
Hackathons themselves aren’t new.
They’ve been around for a long time.
What has changed may be
the tools and the ways in.
You can team up with people you don’t know.
There’s low-code and no-code.
And you can actually build something while talking things through with generative AI in plain words.
So even if you’re starting from a place like me —
“I’m not an engineer,”
“I don’t really understand code,”
“What even is a hackathon?” —
I think it’s easier than before to consider taking part.
Of course, the difficulty really varies from event to event.
That’s why, on this site, I want to make things as clear as possible, including
whether beginners are welcome, whether non-engineers can join, and how teams are formed.
A few years ago, hackathons would have been a world that had absolutely nothing to do with me.
Now I take part in them as a normal thing.
Maybe what AI has changed isn’t just the technology itself, but
the range of people who feel, “Maybe I could build something too.”