Walk into a campus hackathon today and the scene has changed. Teams still argue, still pull all-nighters, still sprint towards a demo. But the tools on the table now often include AI assistants, editor tools that run steps for you, and drag-and-drop code blocks — not just stacks of printed cheat-sheets and C reference manuals.

That shift has a name: vibe coding — a prompt-first, AI-assisted way to build prototypes fast. It’s catching on at colleges and in national contests, and it’s forcing a rethink about what coding education should look like.

A SHORT HISTORY: WHY THIS MOMENT MATTERS

Back in the early–mid 2000s, India’s tech boom was well under way. Computer science programmes ballooned, software services grew fast, and the best students often picked computer science over older branch

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