When NOT to use AI in your hackathon project with MLH winners Cindy Cui and Alison Co [Podcast #198]

Today Quincy Larson interviews Alison Co and Cindy Cui, two university students who won the NW Hacks hackathon with their tool that helps people who are losing their vision learn to read Braille. He met them when GitHub invited them to their big San Francisco conference, GitHub Universe to present their project. Chapters: - 0:00:00 Introduction & Community News - 0:00:19 New Courses and Tutorials - 0:03:59 Song of the Week & Shirt Info - 0:06:54 The Braillearn Hackathon Project - 0:12:08 The 24-Hour Building Process (Hardware & Software) - 0:25:34 After the Win: GitHub Universe - 0:33:10 Backgrounds, Grit, and Internship Advice - 0:45:15 AI in the Workforce and Education - 0:57:48 Future Plans and Final Advice Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,338 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Alison Co is a software engineer who's graduating Fall 2026. She's among the prestigious Major League Hacking Top 50 hackers. She's interned at Hubspot and will soon start interning at Rippling. Cindy Cui is a software engineer who's graduating Spring 2026. She's interning as a backend developer at Shopify. She also teaches violin and holds the prestigious Level 10 Violin certification from the Royal Conservatory of Music. We talk about: - Tips for securing good internships - How they use AI as university studen