VIBE CODER?

HEY TECHIE 🌸

I have always believed, for quite a long while, that there was no point in vibe coding. My thought process was, "Why prompt it when I can do it myself ?" The whole idea was that if I built it from scratch, it would be more fulfilling to me because I made it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, but I limited myself from exploring this new, not-so-new wave dynamic.

You might wonder where that got me; funny enough, I've been stuck in tutorial hell and staying a novice. Never really getting to level up as much as I would like. The ideas, innovations- I had them all; the problem was they were limited to just my mind because I kept waiting for when I would be perfect and ready.

So, yesterday, abruptly, I joined a machine learning group where I basically study, and there was an ongoing hackathon they had been working on and only about ten hours left before the deadline. Did I sign up for the hackathon? I did. Did I regret my decision? At first, I kept thinking about what I had got myself into and that I would make a fool of myself. I stayed up late, whipping my AI to get to work and give me something, and when it generated so much, I realised I was not familiar with the concepts I witnessed at that moment, and I shut down my laptop and went to sleep, giving up on the whole idea.

"Even if you are not ready for the day, it cannot always be night." — Gwendolyn Brooks

And morning came; I absolutely did not want to turn up, but I did anyway. Throughout, I kept thinking of how maybe I should just not do it and decided to get my whipper friends, if I may. Email after email, credit exhaustion after exhaustion and in less than three hours my Idea had come to life, not perfect, but it came to life. It was so beautiful being able to do something in such a small amount of time, and an idea could be presented.

I did present my idea, obviously not really understanding what went on technically for the most part, but I did learn quite a lot in such a short time frame. Presenting my idea and having people give me insights on feature recommendations I did not consider, the business aspects and technical suggestions really opened my mind and as much as I keep learning, I will venture into vibe coding and whip the hell out of it.

I'd love to hear about your experiences. Do you think it's worth venturing into, or do you prefer building everything from scratch? Let me know your thoughts! 🌸