So... what happens when a first-year student decides to take hackathons seriously?

Kaustubh_Negi — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 15:31:34 +0000

Probably sleep deprivation. Definitely Git commits. And somehow, three projects later, I'm still here. 👀

I'm a first-year B.Tech CSE (AI-ML) student at Yenepoya School of Engineering & Technology, Bengaluru, and part of the Kalvium program.

I've been getting increasingly interested in AI/ML, software development, developer tools, and building things that actually do something. And recently, I've found hackathons to be one of the fastest ways to turn "I think I could build this" into "wait... it's actually running." 🚀

Over the last few months, I've had the chance to work on a few projects:

🏢 DayFlow

An HRM system built for the Odoo × NMIT Hackathon, where we explored how an intelligent workforce management system could bring different HR workflows together.

📱 L.A.S.A.

A Local AI Smartphone Assistant for the iQOO × ReSkill Hackathon, exploring how AI could become a more natural part of the smartphone experience rather than another app you have to open.

🔎 RepoXray

A zero-third-party-runtime-dependency codebase analyzer built for the Zero Dependency Hackathon.

This one was particularly interesting because we had to build the entire thing using Python's standard library. No installing a convenient package whenever something got annoying. 😭

And apparently three hackathons weren't enough, because I'm currently taking part in PromptWars and an AI Innovation Hackathon with a six-member team.

I'm still very much at the beginning of this journey, so I'm not here pretending I have everything figured out.

I'm here to build, break, learn, document the process, and hopefully make the next project slightly less chaotic than the previous one.

This is my first post on DEV, so here's to whatever comes next. 🥂

What was the first project that made you feel like, "Okay, I'm actually building software now"?

DEV Community: Kaustubh_Negi

So... what happens when a first-year student decides to take hackathons seriously?