For a long time, I felt like I was cheating.
I’d have an idea, use an AI to generate the bulk of the logic, and then spend the next hour tweaking it until it worked. But in the back of my mind, there was this voice—the “Traditionalist” voice—telling me that if I hadn’t struggled through every semicolon and spent four years studying computer science, I wasn’t really coding.
Then I realized something: I was obsessing over the syntax when I should have been obsessing over the possibility.
I’ve since embraced what people are calling “Vibe Coding.”
The Calculator Moment
I keep thinking back to when calculators first hit classrooms. There was a genuine panic that people would “forget how to do math.” But the calculator didn’t kill mathematics; it liberated it.
To me, AI is the calculator for code.
It isn’t replacing the developer; it’s replacing the friction. It removes the hour-long frustration of a missing bracket or a cryptic error message, allowing me to stay in the “flow state”—the vibe—where the actual creating happens.
Why I’ve stopped caring about “Correctness”
When I shifted my mindset to Vibe Coding, a few things happened:
The result became the only metric. In the real world, a user doesn’t care if a piece of software was written by a senior engineer at Google or a hobbyist with a clever prompt. They care if the app works. They care if it solves their problem. I’ve learned that functional code is, by definition, valid code.
I started learning in reverse. The traditional way is: Theory> Syntax > Project. My new way is: Project > Result > Theory.
By getting a working project in front of me first, I naturally start asking, “Wait, how did the AI actually do that?” That curiosity is where the most powerful learning happens. I’m not studying a textbook; I’m reverse-engineering a working machine.
Creativity replaced credentials. The barrier to entry has collapsed. I no longer feel I need a degree to launch a functional app. Now, the only limit is my imagination and my ability to describe a vision to the AI.
The New Standard
The industry is shifting, and I think the most valuable skill isn’t memorizing a library of functions anymore—it’s the ability to leverage the best tools to produce the best results the fastest.
The “Vibe Coder” who can build five working prototypes in a week is fundamentally more valuable than the perfectionist who spends a month polishing a single function that no one has ever used.
Just build the thing.
Whether you’re building a simple script to automate your emails or a full-scale web app, remember that the tool doesn’t define the creator.
I’m not interested in the “right” way to code. I’m interested in the freedom to build. We are in the most exciting era of software because, for the first time, the power to create is actually in everyone’s hands.
So, stop worrying about whether you’re doing it “correctly.” Find your vibe, grab your AI tool, and just start building.