"The following items first appeared in Joanna Stern's weekly Tech Things newsletter.
Exploring AI tool
My 7-year-old rarely cleans the sink after he brushes his teeth. Dried, neon-blue toothpaste cemented to porcelain = maddening.
But my 7-year-old does love video games. So, I created Toothpaste Blaster -- the first (and only) computer game designed to teach kids the sacred art of sink cleaning. And when I say I made it, I really mean AI made it.
Beyond some basic HTML I picked up at my first job, I have zero coding skills. But I do know how to vibecode. Vibecoding is an AI-assisted approach to software development.
You describe your idea (toothpaste game), break it down in plain language (player scrubs toothpaste off a sink) and AI does the rest.
I've been doing my "coding" in Cursor, an AI-powered coding tool for Mac and Windows. You select the model (GPT-4o, Claude, etc.) in the app, type in what you want and watch the AI spit out code. The free limited version of the app is enough for my needs.
It quickly generated a basic version of my Toothpaste Blaster concept: a sink covered in small circles of toothpaste that are cleaned up with the press of a button. From there, we iterated.
I described how I wanted three cleaning tools (water, a sponge and towels) to work. Each tweak -- from the app's name to the control of the sponge -- was a simple sentence prompt. Out came the HTML and JavaScript and a version I could test through my laptop's web browser. It's not going to win any design awards but it works!
The hardest part was deployment -- developer speak for getting the app out to the public. That required about two hours of testing different options. Finally I used Bluehost to buy a new domain -- toothpastecleaner.com -- and got it working. It's not perfect (especially not on mobile) but, hey, this is for a 7-year-old, not you!
Because it's fun. But it's still a project -- one that requires back-and-forth with the bot to fix issues and pick up some coding basics.
I recently spoke with Andrew Ng, a leading AI expert and founder of DeepLearning.AI, about AI's growing ability to outcode even the best human programmers. When I asked if people should still learn to code, he was clear: Yes.
If you know the language of computers, you can just get more out of them. "AI-assisted coding helps the novices a bit, it helps experts a lot," he said.
The real reason to try vibecoding?
To experience true collaboration with AI. At times it felt like working with a human instructor. Back and forth we worked on the tweaks to the game and when I ran into troubles, it took time to help me through. I yelled at it a few times, but then praised it profusely when it accomplished the task.
Just like my son now. . .when he actually cleans the sink.” [1]
1. It's Time To Brush Up On Vibecode Lessons, Stern, Joanna. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 31 Mar 2025: A12.
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