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 an adolescent (which, sure, have been hosted on GeoCities) and have been often 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 selected useful resource—like an O’Reilly ebook 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.
Matt Smith / Foundry
That modified in late 2024 when my basic 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 website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. To my amazement, Claude 3.5 generated a purposeful web site. It wasn’t good, however after a pair hours of working with Claude, I wound up with an internet site I appreciated 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 should suppose a bit about how the featured articles carousel works). That apart, I simply informed Claude what to do, copy-and-pasted the leads to VSCode, saved the file, and reloaded my browser to see what modified. And it labored.
Matt Smith / Foundry
However crucial 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 device to trace initiative and roll cube when DMing tabletop roleplaying video games, I made one other device to simplify rolling cube in Battletech, and I’m at the moment making a puzzle recreation for the Pico-8 digital recreation 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 have been in several 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 recreation in Unity earlier than deciding it was overbuilt for my wants and swapping to Pico-8. I additionally toyed with turning my tabletop RPG device right into a Home windows app earlier than deciding that wasn’t useful.
