“I made a custom CMS for my website. I got an E in computer science.”

Me and coding never really vibed.

I never fully grasped how to simplify things and always ended up writing long “if this then that” logic chains instead of elegant solutions. So I always had a lot of respect for software engineers because I genuinely found it difficult.

Then AI tools came along.

Over the last few months I’ve been “vibe coding” with a mix of ChatGPT, GitHub tools and my own ideas to build a website that acts as a hub for my writing and projects. I wanted something flexible that I could edit myself without paying monthly subscriptions for loads of features I didn’t actually use.

The funny thing is, AI did not magically make it easy.

A lot of people imagine AI coding as typing “build me a CMS” and instantly getting a polished product. In reality it still works in small steps. You build one thing, break another, fix that, realise you forgot something, then slowly layer features on top.

Getting the basics working was one thing. Then came image positioning, blog thumbnails, social media links, layouts, deployment issues, CMS schemas and trying to make everything actually feel coherent.

It still required problem solving, patience and learning how systems connect together. The difference is that instead of needing years of technical knowledge before you can even start, AI lets people learn while building.

I’m never going to sell my CMS or pretend I’m suddenly a software engineer. But I also know I would never have been able to build something functional like this a few years ago.

That is why I think a lot of conversations around AI miss the point.

People act like tools only have value if they fully replace experts, but that is not where a lot of the real impact is. The interesting part is giving normal people access to create things that previously felt locked behind technical barriers.

AI is not used perfectly by everyone, and a lot of AI generated stuff is genuinely lazy slop. But allowing people to experiment, build projects and bring ideas to life that they otherwise could not have made is not a negative thing.

It is probably one of the most exciting parts of it.