“Humans are cheap?!” He continued on the dismissal of automation: “Automation is unnecessary. humans are cheap, just throw humans at it.”
This hit a sore spot. I’ve worked alongside brilliant, creative people whose potential was being wasted on mindless repetition. The bags under their eyes told a story all too familiar to me. Late nights building routine marketing reports, manually joining datasets, being reduced to human data pipelines when they could have been strategizing, reflecting, and creating real value.
A 30 minute daily routine task is actually 183 hours of human creativity shacked to menial data labor.
Vibe Coding to Make a Point
Rather than arguing, I decided to build something to demostrate the real cost. Ive vibed this in a single session with Claude Code, if I hand coded it would have been prohibitively costly.
Beyond AI-Slop: Purposeful Creation
This connects to a broader shift happening right now. Gen-AI’s has in making creation more accessible has unleashed a deluge of “AI-Slop”.
However the same technology that enables mass content production also democratizes meaningful creation. Snazzy video ads are now within reach of modest budgets. Interactive experiences that once required teams can be built by individuals with good ideas. The key isn’t the tool — it’s the purpose behind what you build.
The Right Tool for the Job
In my professional work, I absolutely believe in robust, maintainable software built on solid theoretical foundations. As Naur wrote, “Programming should be viewed as an activity where programmers form a theory of the matters at hand, rather than just producing a program.” Vibe coding without theory formation creates unmaintainable messes. But just as there are well-crafted silver forks for fine dining and disposable plastic ones for picnics, different contexts call for different approaches. For interactive experiences designed to communicate an idea quickly and effectively, disposable can deliver immense value.
The automation game I built won’t win any architecture awards, but it successfully demonstrates why we shouldn’t just “throw humans at” problems that machines can solve better.
→ Try the Interactive Demo: Throw Humans at Work See the real cost of manual labor vs automation in this playable demonstration
Making Every Interaction Count
Quick, targeted experiences that change how people think about a problem. Prototypes that make abstract concepts tangible. Games that turn arguments into insights. When we can build meaningful interactions in hours instead of months, every conversation becomes an opportunity to create something that moves the needle.