Before I tell you why I'm breaking my AI silence to talk about vibe coding, and offer you a discount on a book, I have two questions for you. A poll of sorts.
The questions are written for developers, but I'm happy to receive any thoughts you want to share, regardless of your role. Whether you're a developer, you work with developers, or neither, feel free to drop me a note. Long or short, all answers are welcome.
Thanks for your help! Stuff like this helps me figure out how I can best be of service to other developers.
A lot of my writing is about humanity in the role of the developer. Kindness, authenticity, courage. Asking for help. Paying attention to your gut. What scares us or overwhelms us. What lights us up and what energizes us. Connection, learning, teaching. Navigating the sociotechnical aspects of the job.
Considering all that... here are the questions:
Question 1: What do you need help with?
If you had a room full of experienced developers all willing to share from their experience, what would you ask? Specifically, about the human side of the work (as opposed to "why does my code keep crashing").
Other ways to ask this: What's on your mind these days about being a developer? Where does it hurt? Where can my experience be of service to you? What are you struggling with?
Queston 2: What do you associate with me?
If you were to pick some words that you associate with me, what might they be? And while I know "bird watcher" may be a match here, I'm thinking more about how I show up in the work setting.
Other ways to approach this question: what would you go to meโor recommend a developer friend go to meโfor advice about? How have I helped you in the past, or how have you seen me help others? If I told you I was a developer coach, what do you imagine I'd be great at coaching?
That's all, just those two questions. Who knew this was an interactive newsletter!
Vibe coding
Wait, did the subject line of this email say something about vibe coding not being so terrifying?
Vibe coding is different from other sorts of AI-assisted coding. You don't even need to know how to code.
You just tell an AI chatbot, in plain language, what you want. Then, once it works to your satisfaction, you use the result without working on the code yourself.
โAndrej Karpathy, who coined the term "vibe coding," once described it as "not too bad for throwaway weekend projects." Fine. But for real production enterprise code? That sounds terrifying all right.
Regardless, I was so done reading about AI. So when I saw that IT Revolution was publishing a book about it, because of course they are, I rolled my eyes. Whining ensued. Do I have to read it to stay relevant...
The book is Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software With GenAI, Chat, Agents, and Beyond, by Gene Kim and Steve Yegge.
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It isn't out until October, but being on IT Revolution's mailing list has its privileges, and they sent a few sneak peek chapters. Fear of missing out got the best of me... and I read them.
Wow, y'all.
It's been a long time since I've read a book where I was hanging on every word. I found it so compelling that it is making me a little insecure as a writer ๐
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I have so many people I want to recommend this to!
I wrote a little about my takeaways so far: https://www.beyondwritingcode.com/2025/09/17/vibe-coding-made-less-terrifying/โ
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One aha moment for me: it explained exactly why I stopped wanting to write code. I wasn't expecting that from this book...
AI itself is terrifying in ways beyond the scope of vibe coding. Not sure if the book will address those concerns.
But Vibe Coding is already giving me hope for both the future of AI in coding and the future of software development as a career. Looking forward to getting my hands on the full book.
Want a copy?
IT Revolution is offering a 15% discount to people who buy 5 or more copies before the end of the month. That's $27.20, a few bucks better than either the Amazon price or the Bookshop.org price.
I won't need to buy a copy myself, that's another perk of attending the conference I'm going to next week. But I'm happy to coordinate a bulk buy for you as my newsletter subscribers.
Let me know by email by September 28 if you'd like to join the bulk buy.
- If you're not near me, that may not make sense for you. Feel free to try my Bookshop affiliate link though :)
- But if you're in the Boston area, if we'll cross paths soon, or if I can relay it to you, let me know if you're interested. I'm happy to have an excuse to meet up in person, too!
Drop me a note
It's not at all coincidental that this email is about both AI and being human.
I would love to hear from you. Hit reply and let me know what's on your mind.
I didn't forget you... I am moving this email to Wednesdays or Thursdays instead of Tuesdays.
This newsletter is approximately weekly. In addition, I post to my blog on my website, which also appears on Medium and Substack.
Know someone else who would enjoy this? They can subscribe here: https://www.beyondwritingcode.com/connect/โ
Thanks for reading!