Jumped On The Vibe Coding Bandwagon

Jumped on the vibe coding bandwagon and naturally started with my go-to project for learning any new programming approach: a tic-tac-toe game.

I built both PvP and PvC modes entirely through prompting, no code written directly by me. I tested the same build across Claude, Cursor, Google AI Studio, and Lovable.dev to compare their capabilities.

Each platform has distinct strengths: Lovable and Claude are most accessible for non-coders, while Cursor offers the richest development environment (though it may intimidate newcomers to coding).

The surprising part? None of them nailed the AI logic on the first try. Every system required multiple debugging rounds, primarily around suboptimal move selection and lack of strategic variety. They all defaulted to identical opening moves, I had to explicitly prompt for randomness while maintaining optimal play.

A typical debugging conversation looked like this:

Me: "The AI isn't making optimal moves. Prioritize winning opportunities and maximize victory chances."

AI: "Found issues in the minimax implementation. Fixing now."

Me: "Still missing winning paths."

AI: "You're right—terminal state evaluation is flawed. Rewriting the logic..."

The lesson? My initial prompts weren't precise enough.

These tools are powerful, not magical. Success requires being specific, verbose, and logically complete, essentially writing code in English. Think like a developer, communicate like a human.

But here's what's exciting: we're witnessing a new interface for software creation that will democratize programming for people who never imagined writing code.

What are you building with prompt-driven development?