No programming skills needed to win! He swept 200 hackathon battles with AI "Vibe Coding".

According to a report by the San Francisco Standard, a 29-year-old youth named Rene Turcios, who "does not know how to code," generated a Lo-Fi music converter using ChatGPT and won the runner-up at the AGI House hackathon, thus embarking on the path of the "King of Hackers." (Background: Ghibli, AGI, Vibe-coding, video generation... compiling the top 10 AI application trends of this year) (Context: AI is really starting to take human jobs; global companies are accelerating layoffs, and American college graduates are unemployed right after graduation...) The San Francisco hackathon scene has been stirred up by a 29-year-old youth named Rene Turcios, who "does not know how to code"! According to a report by the San Francisco Standard, Rene Turcios was born into a circus family in Missouri and was once a professional card player in "Yu-Gi-Oh!" He moved to San Francisco with his girlfriend in 2019 and did not step foot into the AGI House hackathon until 2023. However, he used ChatGPT to generate a Lo-Fi music converter and won second place, thus starting his journey as the "King of Hackers." When AI Meets Hustle: The Power of Vibe-Coding Turcios claims that he "has not written a single line of code," yet he has participated in over 200 hackathons in less than two years, relying on prize money and software points for a living, while also reselling Labubu figurines to subsidize his rent. However, the key to his success lies in the "Vibe-Coding" that became popular in 2025. According to public data, Vibe-Coding is a natural language programming concept proposed by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, which can be simply described as: user dialogue, AI generates code, and rapid iteration. After tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Replit Ghostwriter were commercialized, the threshold for coding dropped instantly; projects that used to take Stanford systems engineers weeks can now be completed in hours by Turcios alone with one machine. Instant Rearrangement of Capital and Talent With the lowered threshold, "who can translate imagination into instructions the fastest" has become the new competition. In the first quarter of 2025, about 25% of the main code from startups funded by Y Combinator was generated by AI; it is estimated that by the end of the year, 40% of internal PoC projects in companies will adopt the Vibe-Coding process. Even AWS and Databricks' own hackathons require employees to try their hands at it. At the same time, new job openings like "AI Prompt Engineer" and "Code Reviewer" are gaining popularity, pushing people without formal training into the front lines of software innovation. The Three Major Shadows Behind the Glare However, the rapid pace has also brought about technical debt and security concerns: AI-generated code lacks human auditing, and the cost of hidden vulnerabilities may be greater than the development costs saved. Secondly, the new draft from the Trump administration's Department of Technology has not clarified the copyright and liability of generated code, increasing uncertainty due to regulatory gaps. Finally, as hackathons are seen as traffic detectors for seed investments, creative bubbles and excessive competition are quietly accumulating. RJ Moscardon put it very bluntly: "All the engineers from prestigious schools are laughing at him, but in the end, they all learn from him." Turcios's legend is not an isolated case, but a microcosm of how AI is redistributing productivity and capital. Experts analyze that in the face of this new rhythm of Vibe-Coding, investors, developers, and regulators who cannot hear the beat may miss the ticket to the next round of technological upgrade. Related Reports Musk claims AI knowledge has too many errors; "Grok3.5 needs to rebuild the correct version for humanity"; CZ responds: a single historical perspective will have problems. Zuckerberg predicts that mobile phones will be eliminated! AI smart glasses + holographic projection are the future for humanity. Will humans really fall in love with AI? GPT-4o shows the initial "emotional attachment" phenomenon; will a virtual partner become your rival? This article was first published in BlockTempo, the most influential blockchain news media.