Vibe Coding with My Pre-Teen

Tried explaining “vibe coding” to my pre-teen Friday night… let’s just say he wasn’t sold. Fast forward through the weekend, and it’s a different story entirely.

He’s been learning coding basics through a school app – logical, step-by-step, but slow. Seeing the AI coding tools I was exploring (like Cursor), I wondered what would happen if he tried?

Saturday morning, I installed Cursor on the family iMac (after some necessary Xcode wrangling!) and showed him the prompt box. Initial attempts were rocky – errors, calls for help. My advice? “Ask the AI, work through it together.”

What followed was incredible.

A couple of hours later, he had built a working 3D game inspired by Stumble Guys! A functional world with a lava floor, scenery, and an avatar that moved, jumped, and even had height tracking and a timer. He didn’t write a single line traditionally; he described what he wanted, fed errors back to the AI (Claude 3.7 via Cursor), and accepted suggestions. The AI handled the debugging and translation of intent into code.

He was instantly hooked. Forget the Atlanta United match on TV later – his mind was racing with level ideas and graphical improvements for his game.

This weekend’s experiment drove home a few things:

(1) “Vibe Coding” is Here: Describing intent and having AI translate it works, and it’s accelerating. This is the worst it will ever be – imagine the next 6 months.

(2) Coding Workflow Shifts: While Cursor allows detailed code review now, the trend feels like AI handling more generation/review, with humans guiding and reverting changes as needed.

(3) Open Source + AI = Magic: The game heavily relied on Three.js, a powerful open-source library. AI’s ability to leverage these existing tools is a massive accelerator, unlocking potential without deep prior knowledge.

(4) Intent vs. Perfection: Interestingly, while I posted about prompt precision last week, his prompts were vague. Yet, the AI understood the intent and delivered. While expertise still offers an edge now, AI is rapidly getting better at interpreting natural, non-expert direction, lowering the barrier to creation.

(5) Reasoning Power: The AI didn’t just follow instructions; it anticipated needs for a 3D game and proactively built elements, demonstrating impressive reasoning.

AI isn’t just coming; it’s here, augmenting our abilities, expanding possibilities, and creating genuine excitement. And the best part? We’re truly just getting started.

Originally posted on LinkedIn. Join the discussion and share your thoughts there.