#70 | Vibe Coding, Structures, Training Wrong

Benjamin Joffe

Mar 04, 2025

My irregular newsletter on work and play. Unsubscribe at the bottom. LinkedIn

I’ve launched a short AI course for non-techies on Udemy! (free code below for the first 100)

1. WORK

Travels

I’ll be speaking at Hello Tomorrow in Paris next week, and joining VC Platform in Miami in April.

Matchups

Our Women’s Health VC/founder virtual matchmaking concluded with about 3x the expected number of participants — over 500 participants and 1000+ meetings. It was great to see the sharp rise in interest in this category!
To pre-register for our events on Biomanufacturing, Health Tech and Climate Tech click here (free).

2. EXPERIENCES

Baby

My son is born and his mom and he are in good health. I won’t expand much as non-parents are unlikely to care, and parents already know the drill. Suffice to say it’s an experience!

Vibe Coding

Since I now have a baby and can’t sleep much, I put this time to good use and I created a short course (about one hour) on vibe coding.

I have shared in this newsletter my experiences learning python, and how ChatGPT has been a game changer for both creating works tools and hobby projects.

When I realized I was building things without even reading code, it looked like this was a skill anyone could (should?) learn. It’s now called “vibe coding” and is taking the world by storm (see on New York Times and Business Insider). And it’s A LOT easier than learning to code - it’s more like being a product manager.

My course was approved last night on Udemy and as part of the launch, I am offering it for free for the first 100 users — in exchange, I ask you to send me feedback by email (what you liked, what could be improved, what else would you like to see in the course?) , or even better: a review on Udemy! I hope you like it!

I want to learn vibe coding NOW!

PS: I think it’s the first course to exist on the topic - the term “vibe coding” was coined by Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI, just a month ago!

3. CULTURE

SHOWS

Riku Oh*** (Netflix)
A Japanese drama with Yakusho Koji (a great actor) about a tabi maker venturing into sports shoes. Quite cute.

Wild Babies*** (Netflix)
A documentary on wild animal babies - lions, pangolins, bears, seals, monkeys… Some interesting parenting techniques.

Skeleton crew** (Disney+)
A Star Wars universe side story - kind of a mashup of Goonies, ET and Indiana Jones. Kids + Jude Law in there. Not bad, not amazing.

BOOKS

Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down***
Recommended by Elon via ChatGPT. I read this after the baby wakes up at night… It’s an old-ish but timeless book about how things stand up and don’t collapse. It really made me look at quite a few things around me differently:

Why my gi breaks around the patches,
How compressing solids could store energy,
Why karate chops work,
Why old people break bones (it’s not direct impact)
The mystery of bicycle wheels

4. THOUGHTS

Training Wrong

I am realizing that I have probably been training BJJ quite wrong: too much theory, too little “live” practice. The ideal ratio — according to coach John Danaher — seems to be about 1 to 5, going from compliant training to fully resisting opponent.

I think this applies also to training with AI, and it is also what makes vibe coding so appealing: it’s almost entirely practice, with tiny bits of theory that ChatGPT sprinkles here and there if you bother to read or ask questions.

‘til next month
— Ben

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