Vibe Coding + BA in English = 💜💯

I originally wrote and published this one over on X. It was a fun time experimenting with publishing an article over there as I’d never tried it before. Reposting this here for posterity:

As LLMs have come into fashion, I’m delighted to find that my educational background has me really well suited to vibe coding. Back in the late 90’s, I got my first degree in English with a concentration in Tech Comm. Next, I got an Associates in Digital Media.

My first job after school was in branding for a digital video startup. We were working on delivering streaming video over the Internet. You might be familiar with that concept. But, in 2000 that was the future . It was my job to build our website and design our logo.

Fast-forward 25 years…now I run my own web development agency. I’ve worked my way from the frontend all the way to the server. I love writing JS and PHP, configuring NGINX, and occasionally scripting in Bash or Python. I’m by no means an expert in any of these languages, but I’m fairly proficient.

Now, when I combine my background with the capabilities of LLMs, I find they’re an excellent fit. Vibe coding (i.e. developing code simply by chatting with an AI) is all about your ability to write a prompt. The more you know about what you want to produce, the capability of the language(s) you’re using, and how software works in general, the better you’ll be at it. You can spot bugs, you’ll know when the LLM is hallucinating, and your overall experience will be that of a senior programmer working with a junior-level dev.

Some vide-coded projects of mine:

$ sshconn – a Bash script for managing SSH connections –

LocalDev Switcher – a WordPress plugin for switching between VCS and local versions of plugins you’re running in a local WP install –

mwender/mwender – my self-updating Github profile (HT @simonw)

Image credit: ChatGPT (of course )