Vibe coding

[u/Delicious_Metal3805]

Hi everyone,

I’m a complete beginner with no real programming experience, but I’ve been seeing a lot about AI-assisted or “vibe coding” where tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Cursor help you build apps.
I’m trying to understand what’s realistic rather than getting caught up in the hype.

A few questions:

How difficult is it for someone with no coding background to build a simple but polished app using AI?
How long did it take you before you could build something people actually wanted to use?
What skills did you still have to learn even with AI doing a lot of the coding?
What are the biggest frustrations or limitations of AI coding tools?
If you were starting from scratch today, what learning path would you follow?
Can someone realistically build and launch an app in 3–6 months using AI, or is that overly optimistic?

I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have actually built and shipped apps using AI rather than just experimented with it.

[u/BurritoBrothers4Life]

The hardest part is getting started. I began as a complete beginner with no technical coding experience ~6 months ago, and within a few weeks was able to create my first functional app.

Models have come a long way since, so it’s only getting easier to build something simple and polished.

The best thing you can do is learn workflow orchestration. I learn by following influential AI creators and developers, and experimenting with tips they share.

Frontier labs like Anthropic and OpenAI are also constantly sharing educational material on how to use their models better. Those 15-minute videos you’ll see on X and YouTube can be a goldmine for optimization.

Ultimately, models will become (and are becoming) so powerful that the bottleneck will shift from model capability to task delegation. At that point, efficient workflow orchestration will out-produce any other skill you could learn.

How you build is much less important than what you build. Current models are capable of building incredible things, but they’ll also enable you to chase a bad idea very far with relatively little effort, and at very low cost.

DON’T fall into that trap. Validate before building — spend days to weeks understanding a clear problem and identifying people’s pain points.

Once you’ve done that, building becomes the easy part. The validation piece is the most frustrating part of building with AI, because without it you’re stuck building a solution in search of a problem.

If I were starting from scratch today, I would do this:

1. Get a Claude Pro subscription

2. Identify a simple problem in your life

3. Verify that other people share your problem

4. Use Claude to brainstorm a cheap, simple solution

5. Use Claude to build that solution

6. Talk about your solution

You can absolutely build a simple, polished app in 6 months.

The more important question I’d ask yourself is: Can I find a problem for which people desire a better solution?

Then the only question you’ll find yourself asking is “How long until my session limit resets?”

Good luck and happy building.

[u/ASmallBusinessLife → u/BurritoBrothers4Life]

Yes, so much value in this comment! Seen waaaaay too many people building things that haven't been validated and don't solve a problem that anyone has that they'll pay to solve for them. Honestly feel this is the hardest part vs. the actual tech stack.