The New Creative Commons: From Shareware to Vibecoding

Greg Urbano — Tue, 05 May 2026 17:29:44 +0000

In the early 1990s, the barrier to software wasn't just the price tag; it was the shelf space. If you wanted your code in the hands of users, you needed a publisher, a box, and a spot at CompUSA. Then came Shareware.

Today, we are witnessing a second great shift. If Shareware broke the bottleneck of how software is distributed, "Vibecoding" is breaking the bottleneck of how software is created.

Phase 1: Shareware and the Democracy of Access

Before the internet was a household staple, Shareware was the original "viral" loop. Developers like Scott Miller (Apogee) and id Software realized they didn't need a middleman. By giving away a "portion" of the game for free via BBS boards and floppy disks, they let the users become the marketing department.

The Shift: From Gatekept Retail $\rightarrow$ Community Distribution.
The Impact: It allowed the "indie" developer to compete with giants. You didn't need a million-dollar ad budget; you just needed a program good enough to be worth copying.

Phase 2: Vibecoding and the Democracy of Logic

Fast forward to the present. We’ve had the App Store and GitHub, but the barrier remained: syntax. To build, you had to speak "Computer."

Vibecoding—the act of using LLMs (like Gemini or Claude) to generate entire applications through natural language and "vibes"—changes the fundamental requirement of creation. You no longer need to know how to manage memory or debug a trailing semicolon; you need to know how to describe an idea.

The Shift: From Syntax-Heavy Engineering $\rightarrow$ Intent-Based Creation.
The Impact: The "Idea-to-Product" pipeline has been compressed from months to minutes.

Why the Comparison Matters

The parallels between these two eras are striking. Both movements prioritize the user's agency over the institution's control.

Feature	Shareware (1990s)	Vibecoding (2020s)
Barrier Removed	Physical Distribution	Technical Literacy
Core Philosophy	"Try before you buy"	"Describe before you build"
Key Catalyst	The Modem/BBS	Large Language Models
Primary Beneficiary	The Independent Coder	The Creative Non-Coder

The "Prosumer" Revolution

The genius of Shareware was that it turned consumers into distributors. The genius of Vibecoding is that it turns consumers into architects.

We are entering an era where software is "disposable" in the best way possible. Need a specific tool to organize your local gardening club's seed swap? You don't search for it on the App Store; you vibe it into existence.

Just as Shareware ensured that the best ideas reached the screen regardless of a publisher's whim, Vibecoding ensures that the best ideas become functional reality regardless of the creator's ability to write Python.

The wall didn't just come down—it vanished.

I Built a Coding Education Site and Kindle Book in One Day Using Vibe Coding — Here's Exactly How

Greg Urbano — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:51:52 +0000

I know what it feels like to stare at a compiler error at 11pm and wonder if you're just not a "coding person." I also know what it feels like on the other side — when something you built actually runs. When a window appears on your desktop and responds to your clicks, or an LED blinks for the first time because you told it to.

That gap — between wanting to code and actually building something — is what I wanted to fix.

So I built gregthevibecoder.com. And I want to tell you exactly how I did it, what I used, and what I learned.

What Is Vibe Coding?

Vibe coding is a method where you describe what you want in plain English, let an AI write the code, run it, and tweak one small thing to make it yours.

Four steps. Every time.

Copy the prompt — plain English describing what you want
Paste into your AI — ChatGPT, Claude, or DeepSeek
Run the code — the AI writes it, you paste and press play
Make the Vibe Tweak — change one number, see what happens

No memorising syntax. No fighting error messages for hours. No staring at a blank screen.

The Stack

Before I get into the process — here's everything I used:

WordPress.com Personal plan — hosting and CMS
Blank Canvas theme — zero interference, full control
Simple Custom CSS and JS plugin — for all custom code
Claude (Anthropic) — primary AI collaborator for all HTML, CSS, JS
ChatGPT and DeepSeek — cross-testing every lesson prompt
KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) — for the companion book

Total cost: WordPress Personal plan (~$96/year). Everything else free.

How I Built the Homepage

The homepage needed a live bouncing ball animation to prove the concept before explaining it. My rule was simple — show before you tell.

Here's the prompt I used to generate the canvas animation:

Create a canvas element (600x180) with a ball that bounces 
off all four walls using requestAnimationFrame. The ball 
should cycle through rainbow colors using HSL. Add a subtle 
radial gradient on the ball for depth. Background #0D1117.

Claude generated the full JavaScript. I pasted it into the Simple Custom CSS and JS plugin, added the canvas element to the page HTML, and it ran first time.

The entire homepage — nav, hero, four-step section, six subject cards, comparison table, footer — was built by describing each section to Claude, pasting the HTML into WordPress, seeing how it looked, and iterating. No manual CSS written by hand.

Total time for the homepage: about 3 hours including all iterations.

The Lesson Template

Every lesson follows a 9-part template:

The Vibe — one emotional sentence about the experience
What You Will Have — clear description of the result
Live preview — canvas demo where applicable
Your Prompt — copy-to-clipboard prompt block
What To Do After — numbered steps
Didn't Work? — the error handling box
Vibe Tweak — one explicit change
Extra Credit — a remix prompt
Reflection — one pattern recognition question

The Didn't Work? box is the most important feature on the entire site. Every lesson has one. It says: copy your error, go back to the AI, say "This didn't work. Here's the error: [paste]. Please fix it."

That one box prevents people from quitting. And it teaches the most important AI skill — iterating with an AI to fix a problem. That's not a beginner skill. That's how professional developers work every day.

I generated every lesson by describing the template to Claude with the specific subject and prompt, then iterating on the output. 18 lessons across 6 subjects took about 6 hours total.

The Subjects

The curriculum covers:

HTML — bouncing ball → paddle game → Breakout arcade game
Python — greeting app → number guesser → text adventure
C# Console — greeting → age calculator → calculator
WPF Desktop — first window → registration form → click counter
Arduino — blink LED → button → mood light
Raspberry Pi — GPIO blink → manual control → DHT11 sensor

The WPF lessons are the ones I'm most proud of. Most beginner coding sites skip WPF entirely or bury it in advanced content. I put it in Lesson 4 because it's where I personally code, and because WPF developers are a completely underserved audience in the beginner education space.

Cross-Testing Every Prompt

Every prompt in every lesson was tested in at least two AI tools — Claude and ChatGPT — before publishing. A few needed adjustments to work consistently across both.

This matters because your students will be using different AI tools. A prompt that only works in one tool is a bad prompt. The goal is a prompt that works first time in any of the major free AI tools.

Then I Wrote the Book

Once the site was complete I realised the curriculum was essentially a book. 18 lessons, 6 chapters, a clear beginning and end.

I described the structure to Claude — subject-based chapters, personal voice opening each chapter, all 18 lessons with prompts and steps — and generated the full manuscript as a Word document. Formatted for KDP with proper heading hierarchy, Georgia font, Courier New for code blocks.

Uploaded to Amazon KDP. Approved within 24 hours.

VIBE CODING: Learn to Build Real Things by Telling AI What You Want is now live — free on Kindle Unlimited, $0.99 Kindle, $4.99 paperback.

The entire process from "I should write a book" to published took about 4 hours.

What I Learned

1. Show before you tell.
The bouncing ball on the homepage comes before the headline. Beginners don't trust vibe coding until they see it working. Prove it first.

2. The Didn't Work? box is everything.
Every tutorial assumes things work first time. They don't. Building explicit error-recovery into every lesson is the difference between a student who quits and a student who learns their most important AI skill.

3. WPF is genuinely underserved.
If you're building educational content — find the thing everyone else skips. That's your moat.

4. Cross-test your prompts.
A prompt that only works in ChatGPT is a liability. Test everything in at least two tools before publishing.

5. Building in public is the product.
This article is part of the product. The story of how the site was built is as interesting as the site itself. Don't build in private.

6. AI collaboration is not cheating.
Using AI to build a site about using AI is not circular — it's proof of concept. If I can build an 18-lesson coding education platform in one day by describing what I want, the method works.

The Numbers So Far

First 7 days:

178 page views — up 642%
37 unique visitors — up 106%
Top page after homepage: HTML Lesson 1 with 17 views
Lesson progression working: visitors going from Lesson 1.1 → 1.2
Book page: 4 views in first week

Small numbers but the right pattern. People are landing, clicking through to lessons, and progressing through the curriculum.

What's Next

Reddit posts in r/dotnet and r/csharp targeting the WPF angle. Amazon Ads once the WordPress Blaze campaign data comes in. YouTube channel with screen-recorded lesson walkthroughs. Paid tier once I have enough data on which subjects people love most.

If you want to see the site: gregthevibecoder.com

If you want the book: amazon.com/dp/B0GX2TGD7Q

If you have questions about the build process — ask below. Happy to go deep on any part of it.

That's about 1,100 words — perfect length for Dev.to. Technical enough for the developer audience, personal enough to be readable, and packed with actual build details that make it genuinely useful rather than just promotional.

Tags to add: beginners webdev ai programming

Go publish it! 🚀

Hello World!

Greg Urbano — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:52:50 +0000

Hello world!

Forem: Greg Urbano