A quick love letter to vibe coding
Issue #5: on staying up late just to make things sparkle
“Can we make another easter egg where, when a user clicks on the copyright text in the footer, we rain down purple ASCII art confetti from the top of the viewport? I’d like for it to sparkle, and for the individual elements to be varied in size.”
- Me to Cursor at 1:15AM
I’ve always wanted to be a creative coder. To make playful, expressive things that live on the web. I wanted coding to feel like doodling, experimenting, making a mess, and following an idea just to see where it leads. I didn’t want to become an engineer. I just wanted to bring my art to life.
But, writing code generally didn’t feel that way for me. It felt like trying to learn a new language and write a novel in it at the same time. I’d get excited about an idea—something small, silly, fun—and then immediately hit a wall: “Wait, how do I do this in JavaScript again?” “Is this even the right language?” “Do I need to learn WebGL?”
The gap between my idea and the skills needed to make it real would stretch out until the spark fizzled away…
Don’t get me wrong, learning how to code, and code well, is a deeply worthwhile endeavor. Back in 2015, I was hosting FramerJS meetups in New Jersey. I’ve paid for tools like Treehouse and SuperHi. I get the value of understanding how things work.
But I’ve also learned that when fun side projects get too hard too quickly, I lose steam—likely a manifestation of my ADHD. I lose the thread. I get discouraged. The friction of doing it “right” chokes out the momentum I need to stay excited.
Vibe coding has been changing this for me.
It’s messy. It’s inefficient. It probably breaks if you breathe on it wrong. But it works! And more importantly, it feels good. It feels like play. It makes me feel like a tinkerer again; like I’m allowed to make things just because they’re fun, not because they’re useful or polished or scalable!
Sometimes it starts in Figma with a design that I bring into Cursor to start stitching together. Other times, I’m using Claude to help me build out Framer components, co-writing the logic as I go. Or I’m mocking up an app idea in Xcode, seeing what SwiftUI can do when I stop trying to make it make perfect sense.
There’s not always a plan. There sure as hell isn’t a concrete production goal. Just a browser window, a few tools I like, and the spark of an idea. And honestly? That’s where the magic lives for me!
Lately, that spark has been burning brighter. I’ve been staying up late again. Not because I have to, but because I’m so into what I’m making that I lose track of the hours. I’m back to making things for no reason other than joy. Tinkering, experimenting, chasing ideas just to see where they go.
Vibe coding isn’t just changing how I build—it’s reminding me why I want to build in the first place.
🎶 Volume #5
For each issue, I include three songs I’m into lately:
How Bad Do U Want Me by Lady Gaga
Everything is romantic by Charli xcx feat. Caroline Polachek
Strange Overtones by David Byrne