I started vibe coding on June 12th, 2025. I had close to zero technical experience when I started, unless you count “Hello World” as technical experience. Since then, I’ve vibe coded my way to four hackathons wins, and thousands of users. But honestly, my biggest accomplishment is that I’ve had a ton of fun.
Before June, I didn’t think I would ever be able to build my ideas. And I’ve always had ideas.
But a core part of my “why” is that not every idea needs to be “The Idea.” I try to impress upon people that you are allowed to build for no other reason than that it’s fun.
So I build for fun! The only money I’ve made off of my projects has been from hackathon prizes ($5,800 so far).
I’ll be honest, I haven’t tried to monetize any of my projects so far. The time will come, but I’m not there yet. Right now, my focus is to ship things that I enjoy, and hopefully other people enjoy them as well.
I can’t explain how fulfilling of a journey it’s been to be able to (finally!) build out the ideas that have been bouncing around in my head forever.
It’s also been inspiring. Whatever “idea muscle” I’ve used in the past has been getting the workout of its life. I’m constantly building, and I’m constantly coming up with new ideas to build.
And, yeah, sometimes they aren’t great ideas. But who cares? Honestly, what negative impact does it truly have if I spend a few days building out a bad idea? I guess you could say I’ve wasted my time, but I don’t build unless I enjoy the process. So no time feels wasted.
One of my favorite projects from this journey was a receipt printer and Raspberry Pi, that used a program I built in Cursor to allow people from all around the world to send me messages. And I received thousands of messages. People telling me their greatest fears and their happiest moments, and even just describing a snapshot of their day. People telling me how the project brought a little brightness to their lives, people wanting to build their own version of the project to stay connected with their family and friends.
And it wasn’t just that project that took off. One of my other favorites was a clone of Google Drive/Docs/Sheets. Built for a hackathon where the point was to copy an existing SaaS, but also just built because I thought it would be funny. But people loved it, and again, it brought just a little bit of joy to their days. And I thought it was pretty funny, plus I enjoyed building it, so it was definitely a win for me.
To be honest, I’m a pretty shy person. But this journey has made me feel so connected. I’m now hosting events in my local community (and non-local communities) to bring people together.
And to be more transparent, I spent a good portion of my life being pretty depressed. Now I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I have a purpose. My life has literally been changed because I can now make silly little software projects. Isn’t that crazy?
When you remove the pressure of perfection and success, you get to enjoy what’s left: building.
And if you take one thing away from this, it’s that you can change your life too: by having fun.