Joe Casabona: All right. I'm here with Susan Boles, Founder, fellow solopreneur. We're recording in Boise. Susan, how are you?
Susan Boles: I'm good. This is exciting. I'm enjoying the studio. It feels very swish.
Joe Casabona: Yes. People who are watching the video can see that I don't cross my legs the right way. It's. It's like below my knee, because this is like I had. Cause I'm a hundred years old. I had hip surgery when I was 12.
Susan Boles: All right.
Joe Casabona: And so it's, like, a little uncomfortable for me to sit like this.
Susan Boles: Well, I think neither one of us ever shows our legs on video.
Joe Casabona: No.
Susan Boles: And we're both wearing shorts.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I think it's probably uncomfortable. It's like the first time you saw Kermit the Frog's legs.
Susan Boles: Yep. Yeah, it feels like that.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Absolutely. So we're recording here in Boise. Really excited about this. And this is a two-parter, so you're about to hear Part 1 here on Streamlined Solopreneur. And then you can catch Part 2 on Susan's podcast, which, Susan, you're gonna have to say the name of your podcast.
Susan Boles: The podcast is called Calm is the New KPI.
Joe Casabona: Love it. I'll include everything in the show notes, which you can find over at streamlined.fm, but we're gonna talk mostly about vibe coding, and then that's going to kind of inform the second half of our conversation, right?
Susan Boles: Yep. I'm psyched.
Joe Casabona: Okay, cool. So, people who have listened to my show know that I have an episode called I Vibe Coded, a client project. I have my master's in software engineering, and so it felt a little like cheating. You also have a coding background, right?
Susan Boles: Yeah. So I started my early career was as a data analyst, and one of the additional duties they threw at me was webmaster. And this was in the era of like, Dreamweaver was the pinnacle of web coding technology.
Joe Casabona: Yes. Back when they still used the term webmaster.
Susan Boles: Correct? Yes. Yes.
Joe Casabona: Cool. Yeah. So for those who may not have heard that previous episode or heard the term vibe coding. Vibe coding is essentially just describing the thing that you want coded to AI and then it writes all of the code for you. You test it, you iterate on it.
And I've done it quite a bit now because since leaving the web development space, I've really tried not to code anything because I don't want to create solutions for my clients that they can't recreate or maintain. And I don't want to maintain, I never sold premium plugins for WordPress because I never wanted to maintain those software projects. And so I've been a little rusty. But in that episode, I talked about how I underscoped a client project, and ChatGPT basically saved me. Like, and like, maybe this is because it was, it's WordPress code, and it's all open source, but it wrote about 2000 flawless lines of code for me.
Susan Boles: So, I did not have that experience when I also coded a client project. We were doing a custom reporting project, basically in Google Sheets, and we were using Google Scripts to do that. And back in the da,y I would have been writing custom macros essentially to get the reporting, to move everything around and do things in the right format.
My experience was very different, but it sounds like that was probably five months ago where my experience was write the code, test the code, the code doesn't work, go back, rewrite the code, test the code, code doesn't work, and then go back and now it's forgotten half of the code.
Joe Casabona: Right, Right. Yeah. So I think we'll talk more about this in part two, the kind of like Google Sheets macro thing. But yeah, the client project, I used ChatGPT, and I used it in May.
Susan Boles: Okay.
Joe Casabona: And I was, I was impressed to the point where I think if I were like a junior developer, I'd be scared.
Susan Boles: Yeah, I think I agree with that. I think it can actually be a really great training tool, you know, if you are trying to learn how to code.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: I think having, you know, it's essentially pair programming.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: But with somebody that you can like ask questions and isn't going to get grumpy or mad at you for asking.
Joe Casabona: Let me just do it.
Susan Boles: I am concerned because I think what we're doing is kind of eliminating the entry level programming positions, which turns the programmer's responsibility into manager of programmer, but without like the experience of doing the entry level stuff. And so while I think it's fine now.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: You know what happens in 10 years when all the entry-level developers never get to learn the entry-level skills? And then you get to the middle, the middle part of your career, and you don't have the experience to manage the code because you never got to break stuff.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Right. Because like, I mean, you know, when I was getting my master's, like we were doing threads with multiple programs that are running simultaneously, essentially. And if you do it the wrong way, you will crash the server. Right. And like you definitely want to do that in an academic environment. Right. You don't want to do that in real life.
I mean, the other thing is like I've had managers who used to code and then didn't code and then thought they could code. One straight up said to me, she's like, look, I know, I know what I'm talking about. Like I used to code in COBOL, and I'm like, great, COBOL. Unless you work at NASA, people didn't use COBOL after 1994. Right. And so like, you're right that I think that we are losing some experience there. Where I think it could be helpful if taught the right way, a lot of junior developers just want to code without fully understanding the project.
Susan Boles: Yes.
Joe Casabona: And I think that if you're forced to describe the project to AI first, you can understand it a little bit better, or hopefully you will.
Susan Boles: I think you're right. It gives you the bigger picture. You're understanding, like, where does this sit in the organization or in the project? What's the, you know, ultimately it gives you, it forces you to have a bigger picture where I think a lot of the times, you know, whether we're talking software or at a business organization level, I think it is sometimes really difficult to get people from like their little tiny piece of whatever the thing is to the bigger picture and where it sits and why it's important.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: And I think you're right. I think forcing people at the beginning of the project to have to define the scope and have to define where it is, like what the point is.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: I think it does have characteristics that are beneficial.
Joe Casabona: I think like, so this is maybe top of mind because as we record this, it's WWDC keynote day and Apple is criticized for this because they seem to do things in a silo because they don't want things leaking. Right. And so like Siri integration, I'm sorry, I just activated a bunch of listeners' phone,s probably, you know, their voice assistant. Not every app has built features or integrations for it or for shortcuts. And that seems like a super weird thing that like a native Apple app doesn't have good shortcuts integration because, Or good voices.
Susan Boles: Just so like I guess not having the voice activation piece because that's one of those where, you know, when AI started coming out and all the software companies were like, we're putting AI in there. And I'm like, is there a reason, what's the reason to put AI in there if AI doesn't, you know, just so we could say that we have AI.
Joe Casabona: Right. But like, so, like, you know, with their journal. Yeah, like with their journal app. Right. It would be great if I could say, hey, assistant journal, journal.
Susan Boles: That I agree would be super.
Joe Casabona: Which you might be able to do now. You could not when I last tried it. And like, as we record this, I'm in the middle of my next LinkedIn learning course, which is, I wrote the table of contents and the course blueprint for this back in January. So like, a lot has changed.
Susan Boles: A lot has changed.
Joe Casabona: And like, vibe coding was not a term that was at least being thrown around as much as it is now.
Susan Boles: Nope. Literally. So you did your project in March, I think, or in May, I think. I did mine in March.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: And that was not. It wasn't a term that existed. Like, yes, people were using AI to assist in coding, but that was Developers were using AI to help them write and debug and like refine code. Not non-programmers using AI to code new things entirely.
Joe Casabona: Yes. And so the scope of this course, when we designed it, was building a movie database with a generative AI. Right.
Susan Boles: Okay.
Joe Casabona: Building a movie database is one of my favorites. This is the thing I always taught in like my Comp Sci 101 courses. I just think it's a really good academic problem. Because you have multiple databases. You need to build a simple admin. It's a, It could be a very simple CRUD app, which is create, read, update, and just delete. Right. That's how you interact with the database. Um, but it could also get super complicated.
Susan Boles: It could be very cool and very interactive.
Joe Casabona: Like you could build IMDb, right? And so like a really good academic problem or project. And as I started writing the scripts now, months later, I'm like, writing scripts is kind of pointless because I'm gonna vibe code this whole project from the require. I'm like, I'm thinking about doing this. These are the requirements I need. What are, what am I not thinking about? Let's create a requirements document. Let's do something that…
Susan Boles: But the process is totally different.
Joe Casabona: Yes. Something that Junior Developers definitely don't do, because I didn't even learn about it until my master's program was user stories and use cases. So I'm like, let’s create some user stories and use cases for this document based on the user stories. What do I need? Let's mock it up. Let's create the templates. Let's build the ERD for the database, the entity relationship diagram, which is how you plan the database. And it's just like, really interesting. Like, the way I envisioned this course six months ago is totally, I mean, so different.
Susan Boles: That's. I don't even know, like, at this point in time, how you would manage to build a course that keeps up with the speed.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: How fast everything is moving.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And so it's like, I know it's going to be popular because all of my AI coding courses are popular.
Susan Boles: Oh, for sure.
Joe Casabona: And like, drive most of my royalties. But, like, this is going to. Hey, we're doing this project right now. Keep the principles in mind. Yeah, like is basically what I'm saying.
Now, I will say before we wrap up here and move over to your Part 2 of this, I did have like a recent kind of vibe coding horror story with Claude.
Claude, by and large, I think creators are considered better because it's like more creative.
Susan Boles: Well, I repeatedly do get told that I should be switching to Claude.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, I've moved over to Claude. It's fine. I think it's like ChatGPT feels. It does feel sometimes like the more you use it, the more generic it gets. And this might be any AI. Right.
Susan Boles: Like, so I have found the opposite. The reason that I'm still on ChatGPT is because it was, I was an early adopter, and now I've done so much training with it that it can almost be me sometimes. And so it feels really hard to switch.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: Because I feel like now I have to redo all of that training. That being said, in the last, I don't know, three weeks, I've been arguing with it because it just seems to forget things, but.
Joe Casabona: Right. Yeah, like, that's like, that's really interesting, I will say. So I like this Claude project I created. I basically asked it to create the instructions for the project.
Susan Boles: Okay.
Joe Casabona: And then I said, What supporting documents do you need? And I just fed all of them in. And so it's like a business development and product development project. Because, like, I feel like up until yesterday, as we record this, like, I felt like my positioning was bad and I feel like I struggle with it a lot. And like, between the conversation with Claude and our friend Austin Church, I felt like I really nailed down the positioning.
Susan Boles: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: But one of the things was like, I'm trying to build my mailing list, I need a better opt-in. And it's like, yeah, let's do like an overwhelm diagnostic quiz. And I'm like, cool. So it like created the quiz and the grading, and then it's like, do you want me to code the quiz for you? And it created an HTML and JavaScript, and it was beautiful, like gorgeous. I just wanted to use it, and I was like, but I need that. I need to connect this to ConvertKit or Kit, formerly ConvertKit.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, just drop the form in here. And hey, if you want to send the answers as custom fields, we can do that too. Like we'll just do that really quickly. And I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, do that. So it did, it wrote the code, and then it said Put your API key here. And this is where this is what spawned the blog post. Like AI is great if you already know what you're doing.
Susan Boles: If you already know what you're doing.
Joe Casabona: Because guaranteed if someone who's not a programmer saw that, they would just put…
Susan Boles: Freak out.
Joe Casabona: Or they would just put their API key in the HTML and JavaScript.
Susan Boles: Oh yeah.
Joe Casabona: Which is plain text. And so I said, should I be putting my API key in plain text? And it's like, no, good catch. Let's do some server-side stuff. And I was like, you know what, let's like, let's turn this into a WordPress plugin. Really dumb.
This is part of why it's a horror story, because I just wanted the quiz. I used Gravity Forms in WordPress, but I liked how, I liked so much the design that Claude came up with that I just wanted to use that exact form. And so I ended up creating like a Gravity Forms light plugin that like created.
Susan Boles: What I love about this is that only a Developer would do that, right? Like nobody off the street is like, turn this into some software. This, right, this thing glitched. So I'm just going to write my plugin.
Joe Casabona: So, so like, and this is what happened, right? I was like, well, I mean, if I'm going to do server-side code anyway, I could add it in WordPress and I could generate the form. And then that worked.
And I was like, but I want a contingency plan because I'm not using a kit native form. And like, what if the API changes or fails? I should really be writing it to the WordPress database too. And so my, can you write a function or write it to the WordPress database? And like, at that poin,t I was like, what am I doing? And I just recreated the form in Gravity Forms because that's the smart thing to do, because they actively maintain their API, which shouldn't change. APIs should not change.
Susan Boles: shouldn't change. But sometimes they do.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Like, who knows? Right. But like, Gravity Forms has the contingencies built in and better analytics and stuff like that. And I was just like, okay, so the security issue is one thing. And then the JavaScript didn't work. And I was like, this doesn't work. And it's like, oh, let's build in some debugging. The debugging was useless.
Susan Boles: Yep.
Joe Casabona: And I was like. So I had to end up debugging it.
Susan Boles: That is where I think. Yes. Sometimes it's doing a really good job on Vibe coding.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Susan Boles: And sometimes you get complete nothingness.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: Where you're like that. That wasn't even. That's not even anything I can debug. I have to start over from scratch because clearly you don't have any idea what you're doing.
Joe Casabona: Which I do feel about like half the things it writes for me, too.
Susan Boles: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: If I'm like, I don't know what to say. Can you write something? I'm like, I can't use this. It's a great assistive tool.
You know, my favorite podcast is Cortex. It's you can find it at relay.fm. But one of the hosts is CGP Grey, who's like, who got big on YouTube doing, like, these informational videos. And he Vibe coded an iOS app. And he, like, said. He's like, I'm breaking the cardinal rule, which is don't let a program just generate code for you and use it sight unseen. But he's convinced that, like, developer will not be a job in 10 years. And I have a hard time believing that because…
Susan Boles: Somebody's got to decide what the software does.
Joe Casabona: Yes.
Susan Boles: Like, somebody has to have taste.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: To decide what this thing is. And I don't think we're going to be able to train AI to do tasks for us.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Susan Boles: I'm not sure we're ever going to be able to train it to have taste because all it does is replicate what already exists. So if you want to do something interesting or unique or different, it can't do that because all it has is information about what has been done before. And that's what it's basing all of its information on.
Joe Casabona: It's certainly not going to make something that has personality.
Susan Boles: Nope.
Joe Casabona: Right. Like it's going to just regurgitate the most common things. Even if it gets super smart, it's still learning based on source material. Right. And it's like, oh, you know, Nathan said this today in his Fireside chat as we were, I'm like, really timestamping this episode. But he said, like, don't copy people in your industry. Look at other industries. And I'm really glad he said that because, like, I have a bunch of posts on this about, like, that's like, stop reading only business books. Like, it really gives you a narrow view of the world. If you run a business, like, read. Not, like, read some fiction sometimes, but, you know, like, it's even if ChatGPT or AI get like, really good at recreating good websites. Right. Like, Lovey is like a website vibe coding thing. And my friend Adam, like, says it's amazing, and it created a project that I would have charged $30,000 for. And I believe him. I don't know if it's apocryphal, but, like, I do believe that. But, like, is it going to stand out?
Susan Boles: No, because eventually everybody's going to be doing everything via Vibe coding. And if you are relying on something that inherently is based on what's been done is just regurgitating what's been done before, you lose the innovative, interesting piece. And I feel like it's just a bigger version of what we currently deal with, which is like, all SaaS websites all look the same, and then one SaaS company has a different design, and then all of a sudden everybody else looks like that.
Joe Casabona: Yep. Yeah, exactly. I think it'll be great if you, the single person needs a, like a utility for something specific that's.
Susan Boles: I think it's going to be really good at helping people who have cool ideas execute cool ideas.
Joe Casabona: Yes. It will not be something to base a business on. I don't think, like, I don't think the result of vibe coding is something that you should, like, seek funding for. Like, like, you know, like, stuff like that. Like, I think that.
Susan Boles: I think you can get to beta testing quickly. You know, you can. You can test ideas, experiment.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Susan Boles: But I think, you know, you can iterate. It's also a really expensive way to go about running software or running your business.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. So super interesting. So this is where we're gonna wrap for Part 1. So I'll link to Part 2 in the description, but I'm really, I loved this conversation. We're going to get into case studies over on Susan's podcast.
So, Susan, thanks so much for joining me for part one here on the Streamlight Solopreneur.
Thank you so much for listening and for watching. Definitely check out the YouTube video for this one because we are in a very swanky studio. I will link that in the show notes.
Susan Boles: You could see our legs.
Joe Casabona: Yes, you can see we're not just Muppets without legs.
Let me know what you think of Vibe Coding. You can go to streamlinedfeedback.com. That's streamlined with a ‘D; feedback.com.
Thanks again so much for listening, and until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.