From Vibe Coding to Play-First Programming

Hello, my name is Greg. About six months ago I started using AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude at work for small tasks — proofreading emails, summarizing meeting notes, that kind of thing. But also some technical stuff too. One thing that really came in handy was analyzing packet captures from Wireshark. I work with VoIP phone systems, and when things go wrong, feeding a PCAP file into an AI chatbot speeds up the troubleshooting process dramatically. Before long I was asking AI to write code. First simple HTML pages, then Python, then C#. I was amazed by the results. These weren't big projects — just small experiments — but they came to life in minutes instead of days. I found out there was already a term for this: vibe coding . Perfect, I thought. I made project after project and wanted to share the excitement with other people who were surely doing the same thing. I created a free learning website, published a book on Kindle Unlimited, and went looking for a community. I landed on Reddit. There were already vibe coding subreddits. I thought — this is great, I've found my people. Then reality hit. These communities had "vibe coding" in the name, but they weren't exactly vibe coding friendly. The term had already been claimed by people focused on monetizing their creations fast, with little interest in actually learning to code. That created a massive anti-vibe-coding crowd on the other side, and honestly there was an all-out war going on between them. Not really the place for someone just looking to share cool stuff they made. I came to a realization: I wasn't really a vibe coder — at least not the kind people were arguing about. I wasn't in it for the money. I was in it for the fun. I didn't mind learning programming concepts along the way. I wasn't trying to sell anything or launch a startup. I just liked making things and solving problems. So I retreated and regrouped. That's when I found a better description: Play-First Programmers . People who start by playi