Vibe coding via Claude has re-ignited my passion for fun, side programming projects. After a few false starts, I figured out the tooling, processes and in just a few weeks I've built several apps and I'm having new ideas consistently:
-Family calendar/weather dashboard
-Bluesky reader that allows you to hide posts you've "seen"
-Work PM dashboard to make time tracking more gamified and dare I say... fun?
-Chrome Reddit extension that hides posts after viewing for X seconds
-A WordPress plugin to replace a plugin no longer maintained
What I love and had to get used to was looking/using these apps and being happy with them being only 90%. Initially I had Claude make many UI enhancements but I learned to just let most stuff go and focus on the function and building new stuff, not refinement.
I struggle with Claude fixing a bug and not giving me the updated output. Like explicitly having to ask it for the fix 6 times while it insists the update is in the output. Did you ever have that happen?
I read some good advice: give Claude 3 bites at the apple and then burn the session and start over. I find if Claude doesn't get it ready the first or second time the chances of a successful outcome drop considerably. Also "Projects" was a nice low setup way of giving context.
^^ this. Also, not only burn the session - sometimes you need to burn Claude. I'll often find the same problem that Claude struggles with is pretty easy for O3 + GPT 4.1 (or vice versa).
I haven't seen this, unless I don't understand exactly what you mean. I can ask it questions about my code and get answers most easily if I explicitly say "don't write any code".
-Family calendar/weather dashboard
-Bluesky reader that allows you to hide posts you've "seen"
-Work PM dashboard to make time tracking more gamified and dare I say... fun?
-Chrome Reddit extension that hides posts after viewing for X seconds
-A WordPress plugin to replace a plugin no longer maintained
What I love and had to get used to was looking/using these apps and being happy with them being only 90%. Initially I had Claude make many UI enhancements but I learned to just let most stuff go and focus on the function and building new stuff, not refinement.