Hackathon for Adults & Professionals, Build Something Worth Building
Free hackathon for everyone. Pro-grade prep for those who want to build at production scale.
Syllabus updated August 2026
Questions? WhatsApp +91 91233 66161 or email connect@modernagecoders.com
Recordings are free with a Google sign-in. These recordings show how we teach, not the exact syllabus of this course.
Our promise
The world's best learning experience, open to everyone.
- World-class instructorsEvery class is taught by an instructor who specialises in that exact field.
- No compromise on qualityEvery lesson, project and piece of feedback is held to the highest standard.
- Education for everyoneLearners aged 6 to 67, from first-time beginners to working professionals, in 25+ countries.
If you want the highest quality, Modern Age Coders is the right choice.
Book a Priority DemoHow long this course takes
This course runs 12 weeks pro prep + Live Hackathon Weekend at 8-10 hours/week. The range allows for background and pace: a complete beginner uses the full span, and a student with prior knowledge finishes sooner. The syllabus below is planned to the shorter end, with margin kept for revision.
For personalised duration planning, call +91 91233 66161 and we'll map a schedule to your goals.
At a glance
- Who it is for
- Beginner-Friendly to Advanced (Adults 18+).
- Prerequisites
- Zero coding experience welcome, career switchers and non-technical adults thrive here
- Format
- Live, interactive classes with a real instructor, never pre-recorded videos. Live classes run about one hour.
- Language
- English or Hindi, depending on the batch.
- Duration
- 12 weeks pro prep + Live Hackathon Weekend
- Weekly commitment
- 8-10 hours/week
- Class size
- Group batches of 5 to 10 students, mini batches of 3 to 4, or 1-on-1.
- Certificate
- Pro Hackathon Builder, Modern Age Coders Certified
- Watch first
- Free recordings of real classes for ages 13 and up, free with a Google sign-in. These recordings show how we teach, not the exact syllabus of this course.
- Live demo
- Optional. Enrol directly on this page, or book a Priority Demo: a full live class of about 45 to 60 minutes with a mentor reserved for you.
- Questions
- WhatsApp +91 91233 66161 or email connect@modernagecoders.com.
How we teach
Deep understanding. Real projects. Expert guidance.
Learn coding, AI and maths through careful explanations, practical demonstrations, and hands-on problem-solving. Our instructors guide you from the foundations to advanced ideas, helping you understand what happens, why it happens, and how to build it yourself.
You will explore concepts step by step, write and improve code, investigate mistakes, ask questions, and apply your knowledge to meaningful projects. Lessons are designed around active participation, thoughtful feedback, and growing independence.
Expert-led live teaching, with practical participation built into every lesson.
- Students explain their thinking.
- Instructors demonstrate, then guide practice.
- Learners code, solve, or build during lessons.
- Questions and misconceptions get attention.
- Assignments receive useful feedback.
- Progress is checked before advancing.
How to join Hackathon for Adults: Free Event + 12-Week Pro Prep (18+)
Four steps from this page to the first class. See a full class first with a Priority Demo, or choose a plan and enrol today.
Rated 4.9 across 547 Google reviews. Monthly billing, cancel any time.
How enrolment works
See a full class first (optional)
Book a Priority Demo: a live class of about 45 to 60 minutes with a mentor reserved for you, today or tomorrow. After the class the mentor sends a written skill report and a personal learning roadmap on WhatsApp. If you enrol, the demo fee is adjusted against your first month's fee. Share your demo Order ID with us on WhatsApp and we take it off.
Book a Priority DemoDemo fee ₹499Choose a plan
Group batch (5 to 10 students), mini batch (3 to 4 students, India only) or 1-on-1 with your own mentor. Every plan is live online, and each class runs about one hour. The cards below show classes per week and the monthly fee in your currency.
Enrol and pay the first month
Press Enrol Now on your plan, fill in the student's name, email and phone, and pay through secure Razorpay checkout: UPI, cards or net banking in India, and debit or credit card from any other country.
Fix your class timings
After payment, message us on WhatsApp or call +91 91233 66161 with the student's name, the course and your preferred time slot. We confirm the batch, send the class link and schedule the first class at your chosen time.
Billing is monthly and you can cancel any time.
International Students (Outside India)
Billed monthly in US dollars, the same price in every country. Contact us with any questions.
Questions before you enrol? Talk to our team.
Ask about class timings, the right level for your child, what they need to know already, or payment. Parents and adult learners can reach us on WhatsApp, by email or by phone.
Program Overview
Hackathon for Adults & Professionals is a free-to-enter hackathon and a 12-week pro-grade prep course at Modern Age Coders, designed for working professionals, career switchers, founders, students 18+, and anyone who has ever said 'I wish I could just build that idea myself.'
The hackathon participation is 100% free, no fee, no employer endorsement needed. You can be a software engineer, a product manager, a designer, a marketer, a teacher, a doctor, a small-business owner, or a fresh graduate. If you're 18+ and want to build, you're in.
Our only motive: build something great. Build something innovative. Use coding logic, efficient algorithms, AI agents and modern infrastructure to ship real production software in 48 hours that solves a problem people would actually pay for.
The optional 12-week Pro Prep Course is for adults who want to walk into a hackathon (or a startup) with deep, current technical fluency. It is priced the same as our other professional courses, Group ₹1,499/mo, Mini Batch ₹2,999/mo, or 1-on-1 ₹4,999/mo.
The curriculum is dense and modern. We cover full-stack engineering with Next.js 16 + Server Actions + Cache Components, distributed system design, AI agents with tool calling and durable workflows, RAG pipelines with vector databases, prompt engineering with frontier models (Claude-class, GPT-class, Gemini-class), observability, security, and shipping to production on Vercel / AWS / Cloudflare. We also cover the soft skills that actually matter, scoping under time pressure, founder-grade pitching, sponsor relationship management, and demo storytelling.
By Week 12, every participant has a polished GitHub portfolio, a deployed capstone with paying-customer-ready quality, a 3-minute investor-style pitch video, and competes in the Live Modern Age Coders Pro Hackathon Weekend with sponsor prizes (cloud credits, API credits, mentor calls, and cash awards).
What Makes This Program Different
- Free hackathon participation, anyone 18+ can register at zero cost
- Prep course priced same as other Modern Age Coders professional programs
- Built for working adults: evening and weekend live sessions with structured catch-up support
- Curriculum led by senior engineers, ex-CTOs and YC-alumni founders
- Modern 2026 stack: Next.js 16, Server Actions, AI SDK, Workflow DevKit, Vercel Sandbox
- AI Agents focus, tool calling, multi-step workflows, durable execution
- RAG done properly, chunking, embeddings, hybrid search, reranking
- System design depth: queues, caches, sharding, event-driven architectures
- Real production concerns: observability, security, on-call, cost
- 1-on-1 mentor matching with senior engineers / founders in capstone phase
- Founder-grade pitch lab with VC-style critique
- Sponsor prizes from cloud, AI and developer-tool partners
- Internship and full-time role referrals for top performers
- Career-switch friendly: pathway from non-tech career to first tech role
Your Learning Journey
Career Progression
Detailed Course Curriculum
Explore the complete week-by-week breakdown of what you'll learn in this comprehensive program.
Topics Covered
- What hackathons reward in 2026: shippable demos, AI-native UX, clear pitches
- MLH, SIH-grad, NASA Space Apps, AngelHack, internal corporate hacks
- Setting up a pro dev environment: VS Code, Cursor, GitHub CLI, Node 22, Python 3.12
- Python 3.12 essentials: types, dataclasses, async/await, packaging
- TypeScript 5 essentials: types, generics, narrowing, async patterns
- Reading and writing kind, clear code
- Engineering values: ship rough, refactor later; correctness over cleverness
- Git deep-dive: rebase vs merge, cherry-pick, bisect
- GitHub workflow at hackathons: feature branches, draft PRs, conflict resolution
- Hacker etiquette and 'kind code review'
Projects You Build
- CLI tool in Python and same tool in TypeScript
- Personal landing page deployed to Vercel
- First open-source PR to a public repo
Practice & Assignments
Configure your full pro environment with Cursor, GitHub CLI, Node 22 and Python 3.12, then write the same small utility in Python and TypeScript to compare ergonomics.
Topics Covered
- REST API design: resources, verbs, status codes, idempotency
- Postgres fundamentals: schemas, indexes, transactions
- Supabase fast track: DB + auth + storage + realtime in 30 minutes
- Connection pooling, migrations, seed data
- Authentication: Clerk vs Auth0 vs custom NextAuth, tradeoffs
- RBAC and row-level security
- Caching basics: HTTP, CDN, Redis
- Email + magic links + OAuth flows
- API testing with Hoppscotch
- Production-grade error handling
Projects You Build
- CRUD app with Supabase + Next.js
- Auth flow with Clerk + RBAC
- Public + private routes split with middleware
Practice & Assignments
Model a two table Postgres schema in Supabase with auth enabled and expose one authenticated REST endpoint with correct status codes.
Topics Covered
- Next.js 16 App Router fundamentals
- Server Components vs Client Components, when to use which
- Server Actions for form submissions and mutations
- Cache Components: PPR, use cache, cacheLife, cacheTag
- Streaming and Suspense
- Route handlers and middleware (proxy)
- Tailwind CSS productivity setup
- shadcn/ui, install, customize, theme
- Dark mode, responsive design, accessibility minimums
- Image and font optimization with Next.js
Projects You Build
- Marketing landing page with shadcn/ui
- Dashboard with charts (Recharts) + Cache Components
- Form-heavy app using Server Actions exclusively
Practice & Assignments
Build a Next.js 16 page that mixes Server and Client Components, handles a form through one Server Action and streams a slow section with Suspense.
Topics Covered
- 12-hour pro hackathon template: 1 hr ideate, 8 hr build, 1 hr deploy, 2 hr polish + pitch
- Picking a problem worth solving, adult-grade scoping
- Building solo with Cursor + Claude + Vercel preview
- Production checklist: env vars, error pages, monitoring, mobile
- Deployment with custom domain and SSL
- Recording a 2-minute demo with Loom
- Writing a judge-ready README + architecture diagram
- First pro pitch, 2 minutes with slides
- Self-grading using rubric
- Phase 1 retrospective
Projects You Build
- PHASE 1 CAPSTONE, Solo Pro Mini Hackathon: 12-hour build, deployed to a real domain, 2-minute pro demo, judge-ready README
Assessment
Phase 1 Pro Mini Hackathon Score Card with mentor feedback letter
Topics Covered
- Anthropic Claude-class frontier models, OpenAI GPT-class frontier models, Google Gemini-class frontier models, tradeoffs
- Vercel AI SDK fundamentals: generateText, streamText, tools
- Streaming responses to UI with React Suspense
- Prompt caching with Anthropic, 90% cost reduction
- Function/tool calling, turning LLMs into actuators
- Multimodal: text + image + file inputs
- Structured outputs with Zod schemas
- Cost tracking, rate limiting, fallback chains
- AI Gateway for provider failover
- Latency budgets and TTFB strategies
Projects You Build
- Streaming chat app with prompt caching enabled
- Multi-provider AI gateway with failover
- Structured-output extraction from PDFs
Practice & Assignments
Wire streamText from the Vercel AI SDK into a chat UI with one tool call, and measure token cost before and after enabling prompt caching.
Topics Covered
- What is an AI agent? Tools, memory, loop, termination
- Building agents with Vercel AI SDK + tool calling
- Multi-step planning and reflection
- Durable workflows with Vercel Workflow DevKit
- Pause/resume, retries, crash-safe orchestration
- Vercel Sandbox for safe code execution by AI
- Memory: short-term, long-term, semantic memory
- Evaluation: how do we know an agent is good?
- MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, extending agent capabilities
- Common failure modes: tool loops, prompt injection, runaway costs
Projects You Build
- Coding agent that writes, runs and tests code in Sandbox
- Research agent that browses, synthesizes and cites sources
- Customer support agent with persistent memory + escalation tool
Practice & Assignments
Build a two tool agent, for example web lookup plus calculator, with a visible step log and a hard termination condition.
Topics Covered
- When NOT to use RAG (fine-tuning vs RAG vs prompt eng)
- Embedding models: OpenAI text-embed-3, Cohere, Voyage
- Vector databases: pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant
- Chunking strategies: fixed, semantic, hierarchical
- Hybrid search: BM25 + dense embeddings + reranking
- Reranking with Cohere Rerank or Voyage Rerank
- Evaluation: groundedness, context precision, faithfulness
- RAG observability: trace every retrieval and answer
- Cost and latency tradeoffs
- When RAG fails, and how to debug
Projects You Build
- RAG over your own documents (PDFs + Notion export)
- Hybrid-search RAG with reranking
- Evaluation harness with at least 50 test queries
Practice & Assignments
Implement a small RAG pipeline over 20 to 50 documents with pgvector, then evaluate five queries and record where retrieval failed and why.
Topics Covered
- System design fundamentals: load, latency, consistency, partitioning
- When to add a queue (and which queue)
- Caching layers: client, CDN, app, database
- Database scaling: read replicas, sharding, connection pooling
- Event-driven architecture, webhooks, message queues
- Observability stack: logs, metrics, traces (OpenTelemetry)
- Security: OWASP top 10, CSP, secrets management
- On-call, error budgets, postmortems
- Pro Mock Hackathon: teams of 2-4, 24-hour build window
- Live judging panel with senior engineers + founders
Projects You Build
- PHASE 2 CAPSTONE, Pro Mock Hackathon: 24-hour team build with deployed product, agent or RAG component, full pitch + Q&A
Assessment
Pro Mock Hackathon Judges Panel scoring + written feedback letter
Topics Covered
- Idea finalists, picking a capstone with both judge-appeal and founder-potential
- Writing a 2-page Product Spec (problem, users, JTBD, MVP, stretch)
- Architecture diagram with picked tech stack and rationale
- Cost model: AI tokens, infra, third-party APIs
- Risk register and mitigation plan
- Mentor matching with senior engineers / founders
- Setting up CI, monitoring, error tracking from day one
- Drafting a 3-minute investor pitch outline
- GTM sketch: who, where, how (even for a hackathon, judges love this)
- Repo, project board, daily commit cadence rules
Projects You Build
- Product Spec (2 pages)
- Architecture Diagram with cost model
- First investor-style pitch outline
Practice & Assignments
Deliver your two page capstone spec with an architecture diagram, a token and infra cost model, and a risk register with mitigations.
Topics Covered
- Daily commits with great messages
- Pair programming with teammates
- AI-assisted coding with Cursor + Claude + Codex
- Mid-sprint mentor reviews and code walkthroughs
- Test critical paths (smoke + at least one E2E)
- Loading / empty / error states across the app
- Mobile and accessibility, judges open on phones
- Performance: Core Web Vitals, bundle size, edge runtime
- Observability: every error visible in Sentry / Vercel logs
- Daily standup logs to mentor
Projects You Build
- Capstone build, 70% complete by end of Week 10
- Daily standup logs (3 lines: shipped / shipping / blocked)
- Mid-sprint demo to mentor + 3 peers
Practice & Assignments
Ship daily for five days: clean commits, one mid sprint mentor review actioned, and one end to end test guarding your demo path.
Topics Covered
- Hackathon judging rubric (Innovation 25 / Execution 25 / Design 25 / Pitch 25)
- VC-style judging: 'why now, why you, why this big'
- The 3-minute pro pitch: Hook → Problem → Solution → Demo → Architecture → Traction (if any) → Team → Ask
- Slide design, minimal, image-first, 8 slides max
- Live VC-style critique sessions with senior mentors
- Recording a high-quality demo (multiple takes, edited in Loom or DaVinci)
- Voice and pacing tips from professional pitch coaches
- Q&A handling, 'I don't know' done well
- Final README polish, judges read this first
- Final code freeze, deployment health check, mobile/dark mode/edge cases
Projects You Build
- Pitch Slides (8 slides, Pitch.com / Tome / Canva)
- Pitch Video (3 minutes)
- Final README with hero image, demo URL, architecture, tech stack, team, GTM sketch
Practice & Assignments
Rehearse the three minute pitch on camera twice, tighten the deck to eight image first slides and prepare answers to the three hardest judge questions.
Topics Covered
- Friday: opening keynote, sponsor announcements, theme reveal, team check-in
- Saturday: 18-hour final sprint with senior mentor support
- Saturday evening: pitch dress rehearsal with VC-style critique
- Sunday morning: 4-hour final polish + production deploy
- Sunday afternoon: live judging, every team pitches in front of senior judges
- Sponsor categories: Best AI Agent, Best RAG, Best Founder Potential, Best Architecture, Best Pitch, Most Innovative, Audience Favorite
- Live judge Q&A with founders and CTOs
- Awards ceremony with cash prizes, cloud credits, mentor calls and founder intros
- Hall of Fame inclusion + sponsor follow-up calls
- Graduation: Pro Hackathon Builder Certification awarded
Projects You Build
- GRAND CAPSTONE, Live Pro Hackathon Submission: production-deployed product + GitHub repo + 3-minute investor pitch + 8-slide deck + judge-ready README + live presentation + Q&A
Assessment
Final Pro Hackathon Score + Founder Feedback Letter
Projects You'll Build
Build a professional portfolio with 12+ deployed projects + Live Pro Hackathon Capstone real-world projects.
Weekly Learning Structure
Certification & Recognition
Technologies & Skills You'll Master
Comprehensive coverage of the entire modern web development stack.
Support & Resources
Career Outcomes & Opportunities
Transform your career with industry-ready skills and job placement support.
Prerequisites
Who Is This Course For?
Career Paths After Completion
Salary & Market Context
The ranges below are general market salary bands for these roles in India and abroad, drawn from public industry data. They are shown for career context only and are not a promise or guarantee of income. Actual pay depends on your skills, experience, location, and the job market.
Course Guarantees
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What families say
Straight from the parents and students who learn with us. Rated 4.9 across 547 Google reviews.
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“Modern Age Coders has been a game-changer for me! I struggled to grasp IT concepts and coding before joining, but their classes transformed everything. I'm now the topper in my class and can confidently write complex programs with ease.”
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“Very good classes. Don't worry about coding. They teach the best, especially Shivam sir.”
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Hear it from our students
Real parents and students in their own words, on our public YouTube channel.
Straight answers about Hackathon for Adults: Free Event + 12-Week Pro Prep (18+)
- Who should take this course?
- Beginner-Friendly to Advanced (Adults 18+). It suits adults moving from non-tech careers (medicine, law, finance, teaching, marketing) into tech; software engineers who want to upskill on ai agents, rag, and modern next.js; pms who want to ship their own ideas without waiting for engineering.
- What will they learn and build?
- Hackathon for Adults & Professionals is a free-to-enter hackathon and a 12-week pro-grade prep course at Modern Age Coders, designed for working professionals, career switchers, founders, students 18+, and anyone who has ever said 'I wish I could just build that idea myself.'
- How deeply are topics covered?
- The course runs 12 weeks pro prep + Live Hackathon Weekend at 8-10 hours/week, across 3 phases listed week by week in the syllabus below. A structured, well-paced curriculum taught step by step, with hands-on practice in every session.
- Who teaches it?
- Modern Age Coders mentors, who teach the live classes themselves. You can watch them at work in the free class recordings before you decide.
- How do practice, feedback and assessment work?
- Weekly build challenges, a judged final hackathon, and honest feedback at every stage: real projects, really shipped. Doubt support between classes over WhatsApp, so you are never left stuck. A course-completion certificate you can share.
- What does it cost?
- Three monthly plans: a group batch, a mini batch and 1-on-1. Prices are shown in your currency in the plans section. Monthly billing, cancel any time.
- When can classes take place?
- Live classes are scheduled around your week. Group batches meet at a fixed weekly slot; 1-on-1 students choose their own. International students are scheduled in their own timezone. Ask on WhatsApp for the current slots.
- Can I watch the teaching before deciding?
- Yes. Full recordings of real 13 and up classes are free to watch, free with a Google sign-in. These recordings show how we teach, not the exact syllabus of this course. Some classes are in English and some in Hindi; everyone follows at their own pace. Watch a class end to end, like you are in it. Sessions are interactive and each moment builds on the last.
- Can I enroll without a live demo?
- Yes. Choose a plan on this page and enrol directly; a demo is not required. If you would like to see a full class with a mentor first, book a Priority Demo.
- How do I reach you with a question?
- WhatsApp +91 91233 66161, email connect@modernagecoders.com, or call +91 91233 66161. Tell us the student's age and what they have learned so far, and we will point you to the right plan and batch.
Common Questions About Hackathon for Adults: Free Event + 12-Week Pro Prep (18+)
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Read ArticleReady to start Hackathon for Adults: Free Event + 12-Week Pro Prep (18+)?
Book a Priority Demo to see a full live class with a mentor reserved for you, today or tomorrow. Or choose a plan and enrol now.
Questions? WhatsApp +91 91233 66161 or email connect@modernagecoders.com