Vibe Coding
I started vibe coding as a thought experiment or maybe as a proof of concept. I had spent weeks being peppered by news that AI was getting “really good” at coding, so I was curious. I decided I wanted to see if I could give it a shot. Worst-case scenario? I’d fail.
I downloaded Xcode to my Mac and watched an “Xcode for Newbies” tutorial on YouTube. Then I immediately ditched all that instruction and leaned heavily on Gemini—and later, ChatGPT. I didn’t know where to start, so I just told my AI chatbot what kind of app I wanted to build. And before I knew it, I actually had a working prototype.
Turns out what I was doing already had a name: vibe coding. Sure, maybe it’s evolved in the eight months or so since I started, but in essence, that’s exactly what I was doing.
The app itself was pretty basic. It was just a timer that showed how many hours were left in the day. I have no programming experience, so I didn’t want to get too far over my head. I incorporated a dynamic background to spruce things up. At least what I thought was a dynamic background. In hindsight, it was pretty obnoxious.
I went through seven or eight names before landing on Simple Countdowner. Simple Countdown was taken, and I really wanted to make it clear that this was a simple app, with a simple structure, doing a simple task.
I never intended to publish the app, but once again, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give it a shot.
Turns out the publishing process is way more complex than I thought. There’s a lot more to it than just pressing a “Publish” button. Just a few things you need to account for:
• App icons (correct size for both platform and thumbnail)
• Descriptions and promotional text
• Age ratings
• Pricing (mine was free, so that part was easy)
• Algorithm disclosures
• Data collection disclosures
• Region-specific compliance
That’s a lot for someone who had never done this before, didn’t know what he was doing, and had no guidance. Just red error messages every time I hit Publish.
I will say though: it was kind of a rush when I finally got the app uploaded and waiting for review. For a minute, I felt like a real dev.
That feeling didn’t last long.
Waiting for approval (or denial) made me incredibly anxious; as I’m sure it does for a lot of first-timers.
When Simple Countdowner got approved, I couldn’t believe it. It’s a dumb app, honestly. It serves little or no purpose. But I was so excited, I wanted to tell anyone who would listen.
If more people had listened, I probably would’ve found out sooner that I wasn’t breaking new ground. I was just following in the footsteps of people on Reddit, X, and other social platforms who had already figured this out.
I was late to the game. Again.
And that was… kind of discouraging.
Until I started vibe coding my second app.
