Explaining It to People Who Do Not Get It

I tried, for a while, to explain vibe coding to people at dinner.

It went badly. Not because they were rude — they were kind. It went badly because there is no clean sentence for I type English into a chat window and a working app comes out the other side and I am doing this instead of sleeping.

They'd nod. They'd say "that's cool." They'd change the subject to college football, which, to be fair, I was also happy to change the subject to.

For a while that stung. I wanted them to see it. I wanted them to be excited. I wanted somebody in my actual life to say dude, this is a big deal.

What I learned

Most people don't need to get it. That's fine. That's actually the correct outcome.

• My wife doesn't need to understand the tech to support the person doing it. She just needs to know I'm okay and the trash is out.
• My friends don't need to validate the projects. They need to still want to golf with me.
• My kids don't need to be impressed. They need a dad who's around, not one who's constantly explaining a dashboard.

The audience for the work is not the people at my dinner table. The audience for the love is.

Once I separated those two things, dinner got a lot better. And so did the work.

A small script that helped

When someone asks what I'm doing now, I don't try to explain vibe coding anymore. I just say: I'm building some small internet projects, it's a fun hobby.

That sentence is true. It is also complete. It closes the loop without asking anyone to carry something they didn't sign up for.

Save your explanations for the people who actually want them. There are more of those people than you think — they're just usually online.