Because it allows me to make something I otherwise wouldn't. I'm not a "developer" but I sure as hell can be a "software engineer".
I look on Reddit and everything you see is people commenting accusing everything of vibe coding or spam bot. Calling everything trash and talking about optimizations etc.
For me, I think the opposite. I don't care if it's vibe coded. If it wasn't, I generally would have never tried to make the thing...
It allows me to try things. To see if an idea has merit. To learn how things work.
Learning Through Observation
One of my favorite parts of using tools like Cursor, Claude Code, Warp, Kilo Code is that you get to watch it move step by step as it makes things. You get to see the code break, and explanations on what's wrong or what's being done to fix it. You get to ensure that your code is covered by unit tests.
You can ask it to review things to make sure best practices are followed.
Language Agnostic Development
- You get to make something in a language you've never used, because the basic structure and idea are the same in all languages.
- You're going to use the same prompt whether it's python, golang, java, rust, or whatever you might be interested in.
My Journey with GenAI
I didn't start working with GenAI until some workplace events in early 2025 told me I should start thinking about a change. It's become my main hobby.
I've built 8 or 10 separate projects that I never would have even touched. Most of them are simple POCs, but they can all run locally and in Docker.
A few of them are deployed to Kubernetes.
This blog is one of them.
Another is a data engineering project.
The third is a productivity app that will be opened to private beta "soon". I hope to take this public someday.
Tools You Should Try
Anyway. If you haven't tried one of the below, you should.
- Claude Code - All web based. Really, really cool. Surprisingly it can leverage Github Spec Kit.
- Cursor - 50/50 Agent and Code Editor. The thing I use most.