Vibe Coding at 50

About

Hi. I'm the 50-year-old.

Portrait of the author at a desk, laptop and warm lamp light in the background
The face of a man who has just watched an AI rewrite the same function four times in a row.

I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. Went to the University of Oklahoma. Boomer Sooner. Married my favorite person. Two kids who are funnier than I am. A golf handicap that fluctuates with my mood, and a long, well-documented history of starting projects I probably shouldn't have started.

For two decades I worked in the financial industry — spreadsheets, suits, quarterly everything. Then I started a construction supply business, because apparently one career wasn't enough evidence. Then, sometime earlier this year, I typed a sentence into a little box on a website and it built me a working piece of software.

I have not been the same since.

What this site actually is

Vibe Coding at 50 is the honest journal of a guy with zero technical background trying to build real software with AI. Not the LinkedIn version. The 2am version. The "why is nothing working, I'm going to bed" version. The "wait, it worked" version the next morning.

I've got nine projects going right now — a trading tool, a nonprofit shop for kids with type 1 diabetes, a soccer trivia game, a physician credentialing platform, a construction bid management tool, a couple of things I'm still too embarrassed to talk about — and I'm documenting all of it as I go.

Things you should know about me

  • I am a chronic project starter. If you also have seventeen half-finished ideas in a Notes app, we are going to get along.
  • I am OCD about vibe coding in a way that is probably not healthy but is definitely productive. Ask my wife.
  • I still don't really know what a repo is. I can now spell it, which feels like progress.
  • My golf game has become mediocre at best. It is, however, the only place my brain stops writing prompts.

Why I'm doing this in public

Because I think there's an entire generation of people my age — and older — sitting on the sidelines assuming this AI stuff isn't for them. That it's too technical, too fast, too young, too much.

It isn't. Or, more accurately: it is all of those things, and you can do it anyway. I'm the proof of concept. A middle-aged guy from Oklahoma who sells construction supplies is shipping apps. So can you.

Stick around. It gets weird.

Don't want to build it yourself? I take on a couple of projects a quarter. Here's how that works.