Time to Magic

In the Super Happy Dev House era, experiencing that magical moment when someone used your application after setting up a server, pointing a DNS to that server and sharing a URL was incomparable. However, the reality was harsh back in 2010: steep learning curves, limited access to quality courses and technical knowledge that wasn't as democratized as today. The path from idea to that moment of sharing your creation was long and arduous.

Over the years we kept adding requirements to what we considered the minimum viable for our projects. The arrival of the mobile world and Apple's App Store forced us to think about review times. PR review processes, specific technical requirements, added to the growing complexity of cloud infrastructures with Kubernetes to make our app scalable and the pressure to have a viable business model from the start, extended even further the distance between creation and that magical moment of sharing.

The demos from last Saturday's Release before Ready (RbR), fifteen years after the original DevHouse, left us very motivated. On Sunday, Lulo, Dfect and Siedrix were doing a post mortem of the event and one of the most impressive conclusions was that: we're living a unique moment in the tech industry where the Time to Magic —the time from when you start until you can share your creation and see someone using it— is being drastically reduced. This metric isn't just a number; it represents the speed at which we can iterate, learn and experience creative satisfaction.

Time to Magic is an indicator we should consciously prioritize in our development processes and in our choice of tools. We're still going to need to scale and monetize our apps, but we need to balance these processes with Time to Magic and how we share what we create with our friends and users.

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At the event we had many examples of this incredible Time to Magic, especially in the demos. Let's review some of these inspiring cases.

Claudia arrived at the event with a clear objective: solve a real, everyday problem that directly affected her — improving how packages are received in her building. By the end of the day, she had created a complete application with a database that manages the entire cycle, from when a package arrived at the building to its delivery to the final recipient.

Most impressive: this application didn't exist in the morning. Using Lovable, Claudia not only implemented basic functionality, but managed to develop an admin view, another for residents, and even integrated OCR recognition to register packages through photographs. The barrier between having a problem and creating its technological solution practically disappeared.

For his part, Fabian created a Telegram bot using Cursor and a "vibe coding" approach that allowed uploading audio and automatically classifying it between "chill message" and "newsworthy gossip". What was fascinating was seeing how he used FFmpeg —one of the most powerful but notoriously complex libraries on the market— to merge intro audios and apply fade effects with barely any friction in the process.

Most revealing: at the beginning of the hackathon, Fabian didn't even know Cursor. By the end of the event, he not only mastered the tool but was creating advanced functionalities fluidly and without the frustration that normally accompanies these learning processes.

Alejo left us speechless with his demo of an application that allows transfers through the Stellar blockchain. What made this case particularly notable was its context: Alejo shared that for months he had tried to hire developers to implement this idea without success. Frustrated by the obstacles, he decided to take matters into his own hands during the event and learn to program it himself from scratch. In a matter of hours, he went from having no specific blockchain knowledge to completing a functional transaction on Stellar's testnet. Seeing that moment when the transaction was confirmed was testimony to the dramatic shortening of Time to Magic we're experiencing.

Alex Platas showed his mobility project with the interest of tackling mobility in Mexico City, presenting a platform that masterfully integrates public government APIs with private services like Uber, Didi and InDrive. His project adds options on the different costs of trips in each provider so users can compare the best option for them. You can check out the project here.

Kari is a computer science teacher and decided to start her software career recently, it's her second hackathon experience and she came determined to find a way to mix what she's learning, the community's experience and the infinite PDAs (Learning Development Processes) currently required in teacher planning, to develop a platform that helps her save a lot of time creating those plans. With Juan's (500) help showing her v0.dev and Cursor, she managed to build the first part of this platform already with scalable examples at least at preschool level and with all the desire to continue.

These demos were extraordinary, but there's something even more interesting: Claudia, Fabian, Alejo and Alex have been in the tech world for a long time. The difference is that in recent hackathons they've been exploring these new tools that act as multipliers of their previous knowledge, allowing them to quickly convert their ideas into functional and complete digital products.

One of the most inspiring aspects of the event was seeing how collaboration between participants exponentially enhanced Time to Magic. When people combine their knowledge and experiences, creation speed skyrockets.

Julia and Alex joined forces to create a critical thinking bot. Combining Julia's deep knowledge of critical thinking methodologies with Alex's technical skills, they managed to develop a chatbot that, instead of simply providing predefined answers, guides the user through a process of reflection and reasoning. This refreshing approach helps people think for themselves instead of offering them answers whose origin they don't know, demonstrating that we can create tools that don't just automate, but also enhance our cognitive capabilities.

María José and Erik managed to integrate what they learned at the Dapta event with what Erik had built at the previous event, added to previous conversations that motivated María José to attend RbR. Together they built a bot that calls elderly people by phone, asks them about their vital signs and provides them with personalized suggestions to improve their health. This fusion of technology and social purpose demonstrates how the shortening of Time to Magic not only democratizes creation, but allows addressing significant problems more quickly.

Collaborations also worked on a larger scale. The Wallavi and Posible teams joined to create a Posible application in a web app and chatbot in a matter of hours. This type of conversion, which traditionally would have required weeks or months of development, was completed in a single day thanks to the synergy between teams. These teams will continue working on the solution with the goal of turning it into a project that impacts many users.

These examples illustrate a powerful truth: when we combine different perspectives, knowledge and skills, and give them access to tools that drastically reduce Time to Magic, the limits of what's possible expand considerably. Collaboration isn't just more effective—it's exponentially more magical.

What's enabling this dramatic reduction in Time to Magic isn't just talent or good ideas—it's the new generation of tools that are democratizing software development.

Lovable has proven to be a game changer for rapid prototyping. We saw how Claudia, without deep technical knowledge, could create a complete application with database, user interface and complex logic in hours, not months.

Cursor has become the preferred tool for many participants. Its ability to understand context and generate relevant code has dramatically reduced the time between having an idea and seeing it work. Fabian's case is exemplary: from not knowing the tool to creating complex applications with audio processing.

v0.dev showed its potential in Kari's hands, allowing her to quickly translate her educational ideas into functional interfaces without getting bogged down in design and frontend development details.

Replit continues to be an excellent option for rapid experimentation, allowing participants to test ideas and share them immediately without worrying about environment setup or deployment.

These tools aren't just making development faster—they're making it more accessible. They're lowering the barrier to entry and allowing more people to participate in digital creation.

What excites us most about this Time to Magic reduction isn't just what happens during the 12 hours of the hackathon, but how it's changing the way people approach creation and learning.

We're seeing participants who, motivated by the experience of creating something functional in such a short time, continue developing their ideas after the event. The confidence gained from seeing that they can create something meaningful in hours translates into a new mindset about what's possible.

This is especially powerful for people who previously felt excluded from software development due to technical barriers. Now they can focus on problems and solutions, not just on technical implementation.

The reduction of Time to Magic we're experiencing is just the beginning. As tools continue to improve and new ones emerge, we'll see this cycle accelerate even more.

This has profound implications for innovation, education and entrepreneurship. When the barrier between idea and execution is so low, we can expect to see an explosion of creativity and experimentation.

At Release Before Ready, we're committed to being part of this transformation. We want to continue creating spaces where people can experience this Time to Magic and discover what they're capable of creating.

The next hackathon is already in planning, and we can't wait to see what new forms of Time to Magic will emerge. Because at the end of the day, this isn't just about technology—it's about human potential and what we can achieve when barriers disappear.

Time to Magic isn't just a metric—it's a philosophy. And we're just getting started.