Reporter's Diary: When I Vibe coded for the first time
It showed that software isn’t reserved for techies; it belongs to anyone with an idea and the courage to type it out
By Naini Thaker
Last Updated: Mar 19, 2026, 16:40 IST1 min
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All these years, as a journalist covering tech and business, I never understood the fascination behind coding—Java, Python, any of it. Every conversation with founders would briefly transport me back to school, to those painful assignments where we were forced to build websites using HTML. I didn’t enjoy it then, and I couldn’t fathom how anyone liked it now. Even as a 10th grader, I would silently wish: Why can’t someone just use normal English to make a website?
Almost two decades later, that wish was answered—unexpectedly—with something called “vibe coding”.
When Abhijeet Kumar of TableSprint first mentioned it, the concept sounded almost absurd. We spent an hour in his Bengaluru office, where I kept circling back to the same question: How does this work? He patiently walked me through it.
Then I met Mukund Jha from Emergent, who told me stories of small business owners, shopkeepers, building their own apps through vibe coding. “He isn’t a techie,” he insisted with a hint of pride.
My third meeting was at Rocket, where founders Vishal Virani and Deepak Dhanak broke it down even further. At an event in Bengaluru, Dhanak gave me a gentle nudge: “Why don’t you try vibe coding yourself?” I laughed it off. “It seems too tough. Don’t you need to know at least some tech?” “Just give it a shot,” he said.
Back home that evening, I opened as many vibe coding platforms as I could find and typed in the simplest prompt. The first idea that came to mind: A Gen Z-friendly news app—“X meets Forbes India.” And there it was. My own app.
For a moment, I just stared at the screen. First came disbelief: That’s it? Then amusement, because all those years of avoiding code had somehow led me to the easiest version of it. And beneath that, a small swell of pride. I had “built” something. Me, who once panicked at the sight of a missing semicolon in HTML.
This is what vibe coding represents. It’s not about apps. It’s about access. It’s about people who never imagined they could create software suddenly being told that they can. It signals something powerful: Software is no longer reserved for techies. It belongs to anyone with an idea and the courage to type it out.
First Published: Mar 19, 2026, 17:02
Subscribe Now(This story appears in the Mar 20, 2026 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, Click here.)
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