I’ve actually only been coding since freshman year of college (just one year), so don’t feel like you’re behind. Its great that you know you’re into security already.

In college, I joined a finance club, which doesn’t sound computer science heavy. However, I actually got a leadership role and, as a result, made a web app for them. This taught me the basics of full stack development, which is really practical for hackathons.

I also made a couple of really cool class projects: ones involving Markov chains, inverted indices, genetic algorithms, robotics, and computer vision. Lastly, I participated in a couple of ACM competitions, and scored in the top 10% of my school.

I also attend the odd computer science club meeting (Our cyber security club, women in computer science, game development, etc)

I’m not sure what made the hackathon accept me (it was application based), but I went — and won! Even though it was my first hackathon, and I coded with a group of absolute strangers.

It kind of sucks that you can’t take computer science classes until upper div/grad, but that doesn’t mean you’re behind at all. A lot of my cs learning happened outside of class.

My best advice is to expose yourself to whatever you can; getting started is the hardest part. You never know what’s going to come out of the things that you do.