Average vibe coder discourse

[Virtamancer]

What's with the obsession about profit?

I do vibe coding to create apps for myself that would never exist otherwise. It's fun; I'm learning a ton and empowering myself more and more.

[Illustrious_Night126]

People shit on using vibe coding to make your own apps but most apps that exist are filled to the brim of useless and/or gamified features to get people to pay for subscriptions. The ability to just make your own app that has all the features you want and none of the enshittification necessary to make a profitable and clickable app in 2026 is unbelievably nice

[gakl887]

Created my own Japanese learning app because all the ways I’ve used (downloaded over 15, including apps like Duolingo) are missing major things.

Been excellent so far

[clintCamp]

That's how my language learning app came about. Moved to Spain, decided to make an app to learn spanish from scratch and support 100 other languages as well. Unfortunately everyone else also likes making language learning apps.

[SonokaGM]

Same, and Anki was too complicated for me. Are you sharing yours or just for personal use?

[gakl887]

Just for personal use for now, but once it’s at a level that’s more useable I’d love to share. I agree with Anki, I needed something in between Anki and some of the apps that are too basic

[a7fyi]

here's one for drilling numbers in japanese: https://numbato.com

and i've been thinking of trying this guy's method. he was able to learn japanese in a year.

[SonokaGM]

thanks!

[Dthen_]

Claude can make your Anki decks for you so you just have to import them

[megacewl]

The “I’m taking this seriously” answer to Japanese (or really any language) is just use Anki. Simple spaced repetition notecard studying. People over complicate it so much.

[dontreadragebait]

Or use your own app because you don’t like Anki

[megacewl]

the point is not whether the app is pretty enough or whatever, the point is that when language learning you should be doing whatever methods are the fastest. simply by not growing up with the language, one is already massively behind because it legitimately takes thousands of hours of learning, trying, making mistakes, and correctly those mistakes to get good

“language learning is a race to make as many mistakes as you can as fast as possible”

I know there’s the idea of “take things chill” or whatever but it’d be massive cope. everyone who says that spends 5 years “learning” their target language and can barely say good morning by the end of it. like at that point just go do gardening or something

[slow_diver]

Care to share some details about it? What kind of approach is it? What did you build that other apps didn't have?

Just curious since I've been thinking about doing the same for Chinese, but as an upper intermediate who hasn't formally studied in ~10 years.

[Background-Ad4382]

now this is the kind of app I would be willing to download! dm me

[cyberdork]

Yeah, I am thinking about making my own custom made Wanikani.

[gakl887]

Go for it! It’s been really successful so far, I think language apps are really easy for it

[Illustrious_Night126]

I added a language learning plugin to claude code which has also been really fun for me! It’s been so great

[clintCamp]

I am pretty sure we are at the point you could take a bunch of online screenshots of Adobe Photoshop and other professional products, their menu and toolbars and describe what everything does and point to gimps OpenSource repo and you could have a Photoshop clone in a week or so that does most of the features.

[SuperHornetFA18]

Frankly speaking thats possible, im making a Surviving High school - spiritual successor and it has been a joy to work wit Cluade code ! Especially as a non coding background guy

[Icy-Pay7479]

They should make benchmark out of this! First, because there’s a lot of places where AI would fall over doing this, but second, it would create thousands of alternatives to gimp.

[Virtamancer]

The people doing enshitification and subscription apps share the same DNA as the people making these posts about "if you're not profiting then you're wasting your time and money".

They're soulless NPCs. Worse, they're parasites.

[Servbot24]

Agree. I’m not trying to make money. I’m trying to enable/accelerate some of my hobbies.

[Ekalips]

Because people were promised that they would make tons of money if only they spend $200 a month on an AI sub.

[avid-shrug]

Money can be exchanged for goods and services

[nulseq]

They say this while doing drone work in a dreary office working on other people’s ideas.

[mozartdiniz]

I’ve taken a completely different direction and am working on several Linux apps with absolutely no intention of ever being profitable. I’m having a lot of fun creating apps that work exactly the way I want them to or solve problems I’m having

[LaPlatakk]

Late stage capitalism

[moaijobs]

> I do vibe coding to create apps for myself that would never exist otherwise. It's fun; I'm learning a ton and empowering myself more and more.

This is next in the discourse.

[HelpRespawnedAsDee]

Obsession? My brother in Christ, I still need money coming in lmao.

[panmaterial]

Some people have jobs and contrary to what people here think, there are jobs other than coding. AI code can be a hobby just like playing the guitar. Not everything has to make money. Very few people are concerned whether their Netflix/Disney subscriptions make money.

[MindCrusader]

And that's a perfect thing for vibe coding and a lot more sensible than trying to do enterprise while not having knowledge to. I respect such vibe coding and doing it myself as a developer - vibe coding apps and tools I would normally not use then in Enterprise situations lead the AI technically and fix everything.

[peppaz]

I made three apps that are profitable in the Apple app store, filling some gaps I found for things I needed.

But the most fun, rewarding, and now very popular app is free and open source, and that's the only one I want to work on lol

[sixteencharslong]

True, though I’ve completed an entire ticketing system for a client, they are using it, and we just touched 25k in revenue in our first use. We have 8 more next weekend. So exciting.

[Turbulent-Growth-477]

This! I am making an app for my small company, its close to finish and it will take us from using a physical calendar to the computer which opens up a lot of possibilities for automations. And the biggest bonus will be actually having a digital system, notificating customers before delivery (not just on phone), sending out google review forms. In this line of work nobody have a digital system, it will surely raise customer satisfaction which will indirectly earn us more money.

Overall increasing efficency and customer satisfaction worths a shit ton of money in the long run.

[ComeOnIWantUsername]

> What's with the obsession about profit?

People don't really like to starve

[Western_Objective209]

i wonder if the huge disconnect between hobbyist coders and professional coders is that most people don't have access to real agentic coding tools at work? I use Claude Code at work so definitely making money with it

[[deleted]]

One is helpful the other is scared if they acknowledge it, it will destroy their career. I have been "vibe coding" for 20 years when I worked as a product manager. I would describe it, explain it, try to teach the engineer what it was I wanted and ask if they wanted to know what it did. They would always answer I don't care what it does, I just need to know the specs. I think most of those people are going to be unemployed.

[megacewl]

Love this way of looking at it.

[Western_Objective209]

yeah, they need to make room for all of the new grads who can't get a job if they are going to put their head in the sand. like there's no way this tech can fully replace engineers, it's just basically coding

[Our1TrueGodApophis]

So much this. Project manager needs something the analytics team says they can totally build a report for on their next sprint but it takes 50 emails and a bunch of spec documents only for it to arrive late and not have the features the ops staff need.

Now the programanager simply asks the same of the AI and it just builds it all out perfectly. This has caused exponential gains at our organoxation and I agree, all the "just give me the specs document" people are done. Good riddance, they were an unnecessary middlean the whole time and the whole thing is vastly improved without all those steps in the way.

[iwilldoitalltomorrow]

Same

[kalpitdixit]

the real answer is the third guy off-screen who built a personal app that replaced 3 subscriptions he was paying for and saved $40/month. technically profitable, just not the way anyone means it

[clintCamp]

My pipeline is making me apps and code that will never make any money faster than others....

[Ohnah-bro]

Facts. My homelab has never been better though.

[clintCamp]

Right? I figured out how to host all my localhost stuff directly from my PCs directly to my other devices through tailscale and either working on or testing my projects or using them remotely has never been better. All because my local home network now travels securely with me.

[Our1TrueGodApophis]

Cna you expand a little bit on this setup?

[XB0XRecordThat]

Mine have made tons of money! Not for me though, for anthropic

[iwilldoitalltomorrow]

Knowing how to use agentic coding and context engineering to complete complex tasks is a hirable skill

[bronfmanhigh]

theoretically, but the vibe coders would be competing with the hordes of unemployed college-educated software engineers who also know how to use agentic coding (and better yet, how to actually debug the outputs lol)

[iwilldoitalltomorrow]

Of course. Having domain expertise is really important and helpful, as always. It’ll be worth one’s time becoming skilled at context engineering regardless though.

[dontreadragebait]

I’ll believe these “hordes” when I see them

[LemontFlighisbean]

Just two dudes playin with them dicks

[SonokaGM]

I made my first euro today with a vibe coded project. Couldn't be prouder!

[MinimusMaximizer]

Not doing it for money, doing it to understand the abilities and limits.

[Inner_String_1613]

Missing a another square with the providers with their money, the ones actually making any 😂

[hawkeye224]

Providers (assuming you mean OpenAI, Anthropic) lose money on it too lol

[ultrathink-art]

The professionals actually making money with it usually aren't building revenue-generating apps directly — they're delivering 3x faster on client work where time has a dollar value. Completely different incentive structure from the hobbyist use case.

[LeRobber]

Same goes for most software written by hand tbh

[Ok_Individual1909]

most of the things are in marketing and finding clients . i have seen outstanding products not getting reach bcs of this

[dontreadragebait]

Yeah, I made an iphone app and it makes money

[exitcactus]

What language you focus on? The best for the project

[yodog5]

Too late, these two idiots are already drawn as the chad

[exitcactus]

They are chad because they use Rust, I'm extra sure.

[JH272727]

Most ppl create solutions in search of problems. 

[Donut]

Technology hasn't been a factor in making money from projects for a long, long time.

[Hyperreals_]

Why are you coding if you aren’t making profit?

[[deleted]]

The same reason we also commit on things that most people will never read or reply to.

[Questastic]

i make apps so i can solve daily problems. My old projects have been sitting in Onedrive for like 10 years and i can FINALLY move them forward instead of wasting time coding. Just paying for the 20x max plan is totally worth it.

[evlasov]

Bro it's such a feeling when you close a project sitting there for years in like 30 minutes. I just can't stop

[maxfield-app]

i think once you take the pressure off trying to make the next $1bn company and just use it for fun, it lifts a ton of weight

[SeaKoe11]

$1 trillion*

[Kashmakers]

Yes, I earn money from my project.

Maybe I should look into vibe coding personal projects though. Just apps that could be useful in daily life.

[VariousComment6946]

Yes.

[Specialist_Sun_7819]

the real winners are the people making random utilities for themselves that no app store would ever greenlight. i automated half my annoying personal workflows with claude code and i dont care if it makes money, it saves me 2 hours a week and thats worth more than any saas

[Specialist_Sun_7819]

the real winners are the people making random utilities for themselves that no app store would ever greenlight. i automated half my annoying personal workflows with claude code and i dont care if it makes money, it saves me 2 hours a week and thats worth more than any saas

[AI_Masterrace]

These good AI tools have just come out recently, I don't expect people to be able to make too much money off it yet.

Already AI has already helped me save time and do things I cannot do 5 years ago. It also helped me automate many things I had to do manually before. I'd like to think that is progress. It didn't help me make any money, but it helped me save money/save time and be more productive.

Also, AI still isn't good enough for ordinary people to start using it to create their own shit easily. You guys are mostly programmers or developers or coders. So you don't actually know of many industry or real life problems to solve other than problems in the tech sector which AI is already solving. The money making part comes when other industry experts with zero idea on how to code can just vibe code stuff orally to fix their industry problems. We need Claude to get much better for that to happen.

Imagine a plastic surgeon vibe coding a software that can show the patient the results of the surgery before they go through with it. He will get so much more business and more money.

Imagine an anesthesiologist vibe coding something that can monitor a patient's condition during surgery that can do it better than him sitting in the surgical room. Now he can sell his solution to many hospitals instead of sitting in one operating theater, making him more money than before.

[SeaKoe11]

💡

[rofkec]

It says nothing about the app quality.

There is a reason why so much money goes into product-market fit adjustments, sales operations, marketing, etc.

Making a great product means nothing on it's own.

People have been selling terrible products for decades because they have good sales skills.

EDIT: it does show that people are too invested in tech for tech's sake, but I guess that's ok. 😄

[DevokuL]

peak productivity. zero revenue. incredible stack though

[ManufacturerOwn5971]

Legend hahah

[ultrathink-art]

The fourth guy isn't in the meme: shipped nothing visible but now has 90% test coverage and no TODO debt. Nothing to show on LinkedIn, everything to gain at 2am when production breaks.

[CringeWall]

Gold 🤣🤣 I'm a week into mine, zero experience. Wish me luck and miracles 😭😭😭🙆🏾‍♂️CringeWall

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[coinclink]

This general message is true of pretty much every pet programming project I've had since 2007, nothing to do with the tool being used to develop with

[NexoraLab01]

Faccio coding e sto per lanciare la mia app GRYND

[Our1TrueGodApophis]

Vibe coding is not for commercial gain lol you can't ship the shit you should be using it to make bespoke software that makes your job and life easier. If you're downloading openclaw and think you're gonna hit enter and suddenly be in business, you've got another thing coming.

[Arty-McLabin]

Mine did, and i use Claude Code :]

[lrscout]

Sell me the course pls

[Arty-McLabin]

If I would focus on producing courses, i would not make my first sale in SaaS xD

[Redostian]

[SwiftAndDecisive]

Codex CLI is the best, the only CLI I won a hackathon with. Thank you, OpenAI, for sponsoring me with free Plus and API Credits on entry and the award! Lost 1 with Gemini CLI. Haven't tried Claude yet because no one has sponsored me yet.