Gene Kim

We’re excited to unveil the cover (and final title) for the groundbreaking new book from industry titans Gene Kim and Steve Yegge!

Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software With GenAI, Chat, Agents, and Beyond is releasing this fall.

Preorder now: buff.ly/rlbA12i

Lessons Learned During My Two-Hour Pair Programming Session With Steve Yegge In September, I got the chance to pair program for two hours with the legendary Steve Yegge, where he coached me on what he calls “CHOP, or chat-oriented programming,” and built something that I’ve wa...

Here's a link to the full 4500 word article, as well as "highlight reels" from the two-hour session — I hope you enjoy!

www.linkedin.com/pulse/lesson...

(In the lower-right corner of the video that shows the elapsed time — I was astonished to discover that, with Steve’s help, we had gotten the video extraction working in about 47 minutes. The remainder of the two hours was learning the tools, chit-chatting, joking around, etc.)

I inserted video captions that describe what is going on, with any prompts I’m giving to
Cody / Claude / ChatGPT, so you can follow along, as well as other insights or lessons learned.

(I built the app in 80 simple, easy steps! 😂)

It was fascinating to re-watch the recording — I’ve watched it in its entirety several times, which I found wildly entertaining. But I wanted to see if I could extract the lessons, so people wouldn’t need to watch the entire 90-minute video.

I can’t overstate how much I learned in two hours. In this thread, I post segments from that session, with some introductions, a statement of goals, and portions from the approximately 50 minutes required to build the code that uses ffmpeg to generate video excerpts, with transcribed captions.

- Intentional practice: you learn best when focusing on specific tasks (let’s CHOP more, as opposed to manually typing out code!)
- Challenging tasks: you learn best when you tackle tasks slightly beyond your current abilities (check!)

- Expert coaching: you learn best when guided by an expert (that’s Steve!)
- Fast feedback: you learn best when you get immediate, actionable feedback, so you can identify and correct errors quickly, and reinforce positive behaviors (check!)

Dr. Anders Ericsson, author of “Peak,” outlined keys to mastery: expert coaching, fast feedback, intentional practice, and tackling challenging tasks. My session with Steve had all these elements, and I can’t think of a better way to learn.

I created the tool to make these video excerpts during that two-hour pair programming session with Steve! We recorded the session, and I’m sharing highlights, prompts, and lessons learned from building the app.

Recently, I've been postingvideo excerpts of talks I’ve enjoyed. Here’s one I created of Dr. Erik Meijer, who talks about how we might be the last generation of developers to write code by hand and why we should enjoy it.

x.com/RealGeneKim/...

During this session, I learned to use @SourcegraphCody in ways I hadn’t imagined. This tool allowed me to level up quickly and accomplish things that had been just out of reach before.

In September, I got to pair program for 2 hours with the legendary Steve Yegge (@Steve_Yegge). He coached me on what he calls “CHOP, or chat-oriented programming,” as we built something I’ve wanted to create for nearly a year. It was an incredible experience!

Woooo!!!! On Bluesky at last!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉