I began ‘vibe coding’ my very own apps with AI and I am completely loving it

My expertise with vibe coding

I’ve all the time had an curiosity in programming, as a result of I’ve all the time had an curiosity in computer systems. I put collectively web sites in HTML as a youngster (which, sure, had been hosted on GeoCities) and have been sometimes dabbling in Python since.

But none of my initiatives bought very far and, aside from my early web sites, I by no means made something helpful. My efforts all adopted a well-recognized sample: I’d fixate on a specific useful resource—like an O’Reilly e book or a web based course—and get began with nice enthusiasm, however as I’d notice I used to be months or years away from creating something remotely helpful, I’d hand over.

That modified in late 2024 when my common frustration with WordPress, which I used to be utilizing for my private web site, bought the higher of me. In a match, I threw my web site’s content material plus a screenshot of it into Claude 3.5 Sonnet and requested the AI to copy my web site with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. To my amazement, Claude 3.5 generated a useful web site. It wasn’t excellent, however after a pair hours of working with Claude, I wound up with a web site I favored even higher than its WordPress predecessor.

My method was precisely what Karpathy described. I didn’t learn the code, nor did I actually attempt to perceive it (although I did need to suppose a bit about how the featured articles carousel works). That apart, I simply advised Claude what to do, copy-and-pasted the ends in VSCode, saved the file, and reloaded my browser to see what modified. And it labored.

Matt Smith / Foundry

However a very powerful half? It was enjoyable! Enjoyable sufficient that I’ve since tried my hand at a number of different coding initiatives. I made a web based software to trace initiative and roll cube when DMing tabletop roleplaying video games, I made one other software to simplify rolling cube in Battletech, and I’m at the moment making a puzzle sport for the Pico-8 digital sport console. I additionally used AI to information me by organising instruments that require a little bit of fussing, like OpenAI’s Whisper speech-to-text mannequin.

Notably, all three initiatives had been in numerous programming languages—HTML/JavaScript, Python, and Lua—none of which I’m even remotely proficient with. I’ve additionally dabbled in some C#, as I began to make the puzzle sport in Unity earlier than deciding it was overbuilt for my wants and swapping to Pico-8. I additionally toyed with turning my tabletop RPG software right into a Home windows app earlier than deciding that wasn’t useful.