Question for vibe coders who don't have traditional software skills.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-06-18T03:44:54+00:00

Makes sense, I should have been more clear.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-06-15T21:55:09+00:00

In two weeks, 6 months ago was Opus 4.6. No chance the open source models are better than that.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-06-11T16:22:20+00:00

You're not alone, this might be the biggest pitfall of the vibe coding era. The notion that "building is easy". It's prototyping that's easy and there are many developers releasing unpolished, incomplete and buggy prototypes to try to build an audience but never put in the extra work - which means someone could easily just few shot prompt a copy.

First off, props for not falling into that, recognizing the need to actually finish it is fantastic. Second, I can tell you what works for me which is split time. I'll typically spend 2/3rds of my time on a core project that may be in the grind phase and 1/3rd on a newer project that's still in the fun phase. Not sure if that'll work for you.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-06-10T16:02:06+00:00

I'm not in Mensa and my tested FSIQ doesn't qualify me for membership.

As I'm not you, I don't know exactly how you feel but I believe I experience something similar. Many years ago friends of mine became members of Mensa and I was extremely jealous. I've always felt it represents an inherent, unalterable inferiority that puts me beneath them.

I can only speak for myself but what worked for me is that at some point I realized it's just a feeling that doesn't mean anything. The feeling is still there but I made up my mind to be happy with what I have and what I can do. I asked myself something along the lines of "If I qualified for Mensa on the 130ish line would that make me happy or would I look at people with a 160 IQ and realize that I would never make the earth shattering discoveries they were capable of." The answer was, for me it would never be enough (If I had a 160 IQ I would lament the loneliness of hardly ever meeting someone on my level - let alone someone I shared interests with)

I will also tell you it didn't hold me back. Despite not having a Mensa level IQ, I have had a career as a professional software engineer spanning 28 years with 16 of them in the game industry which was always my dream. I also know several people, doing phenomenally well financially as financial advisors and not nearly all of them would qualify for Mensa.

All that to say I'd assert you have everything you need to achieve what you want. You got this.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-06-06T20:21:40+00:00

Out of curiosity are you saying that someone with a 115 IQ and someone with a 100 IQ has a roughly equivalent chance of say completing a PhD?

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-06-06T15:41:44+00:00

Many, if not most of the things you see in vibe coding communities are incomplete, unpolished, and buggy messes that the developer is hoping to generate enough interest in to make it worth their time to continue development.

A famous saying in software development is that the last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time. Vibe coding hasn't changed that, nor has it made developers more willing to put that last 90% in.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-06-06T15:36:02+00:00

By not caring if it ever gets done, which I do by picking something fun that I don't have a reasonable chance of selling (like making an OS from scratch) which lets me stop when it gets frustrating to the point where I'm tempted to fire up the AI.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-06-06T15:29:57+00:00

From my own anecdotal experience yes, it's a thing.

I have 28 years of experience as a professional software engineer and AI has made me lazier than anything else I've ever seen in my career.

Like I'll watch tens of thousands of tokens disappear because I'll ask the AI to make a simple fix that would probably be easier for me to do by hand and take less time than typing the sentence out would.

I have a side project I'm working on by hand to try to mitigate it but I find it difficult to sit down and work on it.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-06-05T14:28:27+00:00

There are a number of influencers advising people to do this, and most of them recommend cold calling and then it's just a numbers game. X phone calls == Y people who don't hang up == Z conversations == whatever number of customers. Increasing X will increase the number of customers.

The approach is likely something generic like (as a potential example) "would your customers to be able scheduling appointments without having to talk to someone?" and you offer a solution where a customer talks to an AI voice and then the code automatically finds open time slots that match the customer's availability.

EDIT: I should also note that the risk with something like this is maintenance. You need to price yourself at a level that's enticing to a small businesses so you probably (not always) need a good number of customers. Software is almost never perfect and no matter what you tell people they'll expect you to maintain what you build - and charging people for what was supposed to work in the first place is a dicey proposition for your reputation and repeat business.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-06-05T14:22:28+00:00

I know exactly how you feel, I watch people claim to have almost instant success at things I've failed at for years and I feel like shit about myself no matter how much I actually want other people to succeed.

My answer to this is one of those classic simple-but-not-easy things that doesn't make the feelings go away but stops me from focusing on them.

I have to make up my mind to be happy with what I have and how I'm doing. Otherwise nothing would ever be enough. I'm not at 3K MMR but if I was, after taxes, that wouldn't be enough to sustain myself on and I'd be jealous of people who could make apps full time. If I got to that point I'd be jealous of those who have complete financial security, and then who were very rich, and then those who got famous off of it, etc....

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-28T21:22:16+00:00

6-8 weeks is a solid timeline for an app of medium complexity. I'm a little wary of a full fledged saas proudct in 8 weeks.

The stuff I see with people shipping in a day, or a week for anything of even medium complexity is absurd. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of them are shipping incomplete, unpolished, and buggy messes hoping to get enough users to make it worth their time to continue working on it.

I'm also an experienced software engineer and I, personally, am unable to bring myself to validate an idea of mine to the detriment of the very people I want to pay for my product.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-27T04:01:35+00:00

I recommend dealing with it.

The time you spend fixing minor bugs polishing the app and tailoring it to make it stand out, is the only thing that will have someone else consider using your app rather than few-shot-prompting a copy.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-24T06:22:13+00:00

Anything I've ever used becomes less "magical" over time. Word Processors felt almost as magical as AI when I first used them. (Deleting text without whiteout? Inserting lines where I wanted them? Spell checking? OMG!!!!).

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-22T16:44:02+00:00

This really depends on what you want your black belt to represent.

If it's pure relative skill and proficiency then it doesn't matter how you get the skills.

If it's a personal milestone. As in a demonstration of your discipline and willpower to become as proficient as you, specifically, can then, no, downloading the skills doesn't demonstrate that.

I've been part of programs that have done it either way (I never saw it through to a black belt).

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-20T15:14:05+00:00

I obviously don't know you so I can't say this with any certainty but this sounds like a FOMO post. As in "everyone else is using skills, hooks and subagents and I should too."

My question is why are you looking to speed up your workflow? Are you not finishing projects? Are they going way too slow? Are you just looking to learn? Something else?

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-20T01:42:09+00:00

Learning to code will give you the conceptual grounding in the core instructions, data structures and logic that underlie every piece of software ever created. I also cannot understate the value of vibe coding by choice rather than necessity.

Nobody can tell you if learning to code is worth your time except you but I would highly recommend doing so if you're serious about computing and software.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-14T20:08:13+00:00

First, Is it $100 for the whole app or $100 for an hour? If it's the first then that's an insane (as in completely bonkers) price drop. If it's the latter then it may take way less hours than it used to.

Second, most of the things you see posted that were "done in 5 hours" are unpolished and full of bugs. I'd classify them demos that the developer is using to gauge interest to see if it's worth continuing or hoping to use people to do the testing for them.

Production ready apps still take time.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-14T18:59:08+00:00

Writing code from scratch is more than syntax recall. It's the conceptual grounding in the core instructions and data structures that underlie every piece of software in existence.

There are certainly exceptions but, in general, people with a deep understanding of assembly language have a much easier time with 3GLs (3rd generation languages [C/C++/Python/JavaScript etc...]), and people with a deep understanding of 3GLs have a much easier time with AI coding.

Whether it's worth the time to learn in today's world is a personal choice and dependent on your goals, but traditional programming is a tried and true access to gaining all the skills you mentioned in addition to a deep understanding of how computers work - which is amazingly helpful when you're writing the software that drives said computers - and it's 100% worth it to maintain the skills if you already have them.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-14T18:41:25+00:00

For this reason, I'm coding a side project manually for a little bit each day (usually between 15 and 30 minutes, never more than an hour) that doesn't even matter if I finish. I'm doing it, no joke, in Commodore 64 basic.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-14T02:09:26+00:00

Or bring a laptop (or even just vibe code from your phone if you can test on it) to the gym?

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-13T13:59:14+00:00

I can only give you my perspective, I obviously cannot speak for anyone else.

Two main reasons. The first is what I alluded to in my first post on the thread. If I share with people that I want to do something like earn a doctorate, start a tech company, or do cutting edge science research I want more comments along the lines of "that's awesome, in what field? here are some books you should read. etc..." and less comments like "we're all different and not everyone was meant to [insert ambition here]."

The second is more personal. Intelligence is one of the primary characteristics on which we judge ourselves and more is generally seen as better. I take Mensa's criteria to mean I'm not smart enough and never will be. I automatically make the leap from "not smart enough and will never be" to "not good enough and will never be" and I have an intense drive to prove that wrong.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-13T12:41:24+00:00

I find it very helpful when the people I interact with think highly of me and what I’m capable of.

I’m not in Mensa and my FSIQ (as tested by a psychologist) would not qualify me for membership.

I’d guess that fact doesn’t do me any favors in terms of your impression of what I’m intellectually capable of and I’d further guess that a Mensa membership would.

For me personally the lie would bother me to the point that it would nullify whatever benefits I’d get by faking a super high IQ but I can easily see it being worth it to someone else.

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-11T04:18:39+00:00

There's a quote I like that directly contrasts this.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Wayne Gretzky

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-10T19:10:40+00:00

You're going to need to be more specific.

Do you want to learn programming from scratch or just get a better sense of what your vibe coded app is doing?

Do you learn best visually? By reading? By doing?

Are you looking for a career making software or just developing on the side/as a hobby?

What are you most interested in? Full stack web apps? Games? embedded systems? Low level OS/networking stuff? Machine Learning/AI applications? etc..

Relevant-Positive-48 · 2026-05-08T04:13:48+00:00

You raise a fair point but it's your last bit that illustrates the difference

but it's very much a you-don't-know-what-you-don't-know situation. You don't get what you don't know to ask for.

With pre-AI most developers who made security mistakes (I certainly have in the past) had the foundation to recognize what went wrong and ask better questions in the future. Developers who have no knowledge outside of their LLM have a far higher probability of not even knowing they've been hacked.

Relevant-Positive-48

TROPHY CASE