I’m a Normie. Can Normies Really Vibe Code?
Chris Colin, a non-coder, explores the concept of 'sludge' in customer service experiences and attempts to create an app to highlight these frustrations. He discusses the potential of vibe coding, which allows individuals to build apps without programming skills. This democratization of app development could empower users to address the small but pervasive annoyances in modern life.
- ▪Sludge refers to bureaucratic annoyances that complicate service cancellations and acquisitions.
- ▪Chris Colin aims to create an app that exposes these sludgy experiences.
- ▪Vibe coding enables users to build apps tailored to their specific frustrations without needing coding skills.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
You’ve likely experienced “sludge,” even if you didn’t know it. It’s the little bureaucratic annoyances involved in attempting to cancel a service or acquire a service, the small points of customer friction that companies and governments put in your way to make accomplishing something a minor, if vivid, nightmare. Think: being on hold for two hours to cancel a television service you no longer need, only to be upselled three times before they finally grant your wish. For Wired, Chris Colin, a non-coder, decided he’d try to vibe code an app to highlight sludgy experiences. “The app I envisioned would expose this phenomenon, make the cumulative weight of these obligations a little harder to ignore,” he writes.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Longreads.
