> Front-end is almost everything. There is 0 burden of proof that your project is actually functional or that it has any practical application. As long as it looks cool, investors and non-technical people will eat that up.

This is depressing, I'd expect people at these events to be more informed and less ignorant than the general public.

This has been a lesson I learnt very early in my SWE career. This is nothing new sadly, but is a great lesson that not everything is technical expertise, but rather presentation and UI eye candy.

Investors want something to dream about.

Yes, the modern pointy-haired boss thinks he's the next Steve Jobs visionary and will pitch his shitty internal ERP automation tool project as "the next sleek iPhone-like UI".

(Wish I was joking.)

It's not new though. LLMs make it more pervasive, but hackathons have always naturally preferred shiny, cool-looking things. At least, in my experience.