by Jordan Fulghum, June 2025

I feel like a wizard now. So where'd the magic go?

I've been programming for years. A designer-turned-product guy who self-taught, starting with Ruby on Rails in 2009. Back then, coding felt like discovering a new world, step by challenging step. Rails lowered the ramp just enough that I could stumble onto it.

Over the years, I progressively learned, going deeper into the stack—from frontend polish all the way down. It was hard. It was frustrating. But every moment spent grinding through complex problems brought with it that feeling of reward, accomplishment, and pride. It was I like to call "the good suck," akin to the satisfaction you get from finally overcoming a brutally challenging boss in a Fromsoft game. The struggle wasn't just a means - it was the point.

Recently, I've been thinking about an important question: is the joy in coding driven by creating the thing itself, or by the thing once it's created? For me, I think it's both. But vibecoding - leveraging AI agents to streamline the dev process - has made me very aware that the journey was a far bigger factor than I previously thought.

And then there's the broader existential impact. When you feel the roar of the vibecoding masses at your heels, swiftly gobbling up every clever SaaS idea you might have, it takes away some of the incentive to innovate. Why build something carefully crafted if anyone else can spin up a comparable solution with a few prompts? It can make a man's sails feel empty pretty quick.

There's no turning back - nor should we. Those resisting vibecoding are delaying the inevitable. But as we collectively navigate and refine these new tools, I hope we build them in a way that does more than just complete our tasks for us, while we hop to the next browser tab or go re-up our coffee mug. Ideally, tools should find ways to teach us new things, preserve the thrill of overcoming meaningful challenges, and, most importantly, bring back some of the fun we're losing along the way.

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If you have thoughts on this, reach out! I'm at jordan@fulghum.io.