Today Quincy Larson interviews Alison Ko and Cindy Cui, two university students who won the NW Hex Hackathon with their device that helps people with vision loss learn to read Braille. He met him when GitHub invited him to present his project at their big San Francisco conference, GitHub Universe.
Allison Co. is a software engineer that falls in 2026. He is among the prestigious Major League Hacking Top 50 Hackers. She is enrolled at HubSpot and will soon begin interning at Rapping.
Cindy CUI is a software engineer graduating in spring 2026. She is interning as a back-end developer at Shopify. She also teaches violin and holds the prestigious Level 10 Violin Certification from the Royal Conservatoire of Music.
We talk about:
Tips to get a good internship
How they use AI as university students and Devs, and its limitations
How they created their winning hackathon project to help people with vision loss learn to read braille
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Link to our discussion:
Community News Section:
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Today’s Song of the Week is Leon Ware’s 1982 classic “Why I Come to California”. I love the positive energy of the song, the blast of brass, and the duo’s vocals. I thought it would be perfect since I met today’s podcast guests in California when they visited from Canada.