Mike Chong

My Vibe Coding Journey - From GitHub Copilot Beta to Claude Code

January 20, 2025

My Vibe Coding Journey - From GitHub Copilot Beta to Claude Code

Today I want to share my personal experience with the evolution of Vibe Coding. While Andrej Karpathy coined this term on Twitter in February 2025, AI-assisted programming has been around much longer.

Early GitHub Copilot Beta Testing

The earliest form of AI programming assistance was GitHub's feature similar to Google's Smart Compose, like the intelligent writing assistance in Gmail.

I'd been following this space closely because GPT-2 (or GPT-3) was still open source, and OpenAI was a very open source company back then. GitHub integrated this open model, and even before ChatGPT launched, there were signals that code completion was promising. The Transformer architecture (the "T" in GPT) excelled at completion, so GitHub built an autocomplete model and VS Code plugin.

At the time, GitHub's CEO was Nat Friedman (who later left with at least $100 million to join Meta). He asked on Twitter who was interested in beta testing, so I raised my hand and was fortunate to become one of the earliest beta testers.

Tool Choices During My Startup Phase

When I left Microsoft to start my own company, Cursor wasn't as popular as it is now. I had tried Cursor and felt it wasn't much different from copying and pasting from ChatGPT, so I mainly used VSCode with GitHub Copilot.

Here's an interesting comparison: Yesterday I asked a friend working on Wall Street what tools they use for coding in 2025. He said they still use ChatGPT's web version with copy-paste. When I asked if he meant tools like Codex, he said no—still the traditional copy-paste method.

The Magic of GitHub Copilot

Getting GitHub Copilot beta access felt like receiving the world's most exciting toy—I started coding like crazy. Though the efficiency gain was only 5-10% compared to today's standards, at most writing a comment and getting a simple function. Compared to AI now generating entire projects, it was nothing. This was 2021.

AI Resistance Within Microsoft

I discovered fascinating dynamics inside Microsoft. The resistance to AI was enormous—many managers and colleagues strongly opposed AI tools. I believe many didn't use them personally either. Since I worked in mobile development, the effectiveness was indeed much lower compared to frontend development.

Support from Senior Leadership

In late 2023, to embrace the AI programming trend, I joined the OneDrive Web Photos team (similar to Google Photos web version).

An iOS leader who really appreciated my work suggested I present to the highest levels I could access—Satya's direct reports, the Executive Vice Presidents (Microsoft's structure is complex, but EVP is the highest VP level). When I shared how we used AI tools, they were very interested.

Interestingly, the highest management levels (not middle management) most wanted us to use these tools. They even collaborated with GitHub to create dashboards for each manager showing how many engineers used Copilot and their daily activity metrics.

Conservative Management Resistance

However, my manager was extremely conservative—someone who had worked at Microsoft since the 80s or 90s until retiring last year, a typical white American male (probably from North or South Carolina).

I was very straightforward and shared everything with him, but he wouldn't even let me use automatic code formatting tools, saying he trusted humans more. For him, AI writing code was an untouchable taboo. This was an extreme example.

The Decision to Leave Microsoft

After working under this conservative manager for several months, I felt the system was too large and unchangeable, essentially meaningless. Inspired by Yi Ke Xin Fan (易课新饭), plus having some financial safety net and family support, I decided to start my own business.

Three main reasons for leaving Microsoft:

  1. Salary Issues - Working in Canada and other non-US locations pays significantly less than US positions
  2. Universal Healthcare - Canada's universal healthcare, despite its problems, gave me the courage to take entrepreneurial risks
  3. Opportunity Cost - Working at Microsoft had too high an opportunity cost. As Mark Zuckerberg recently said, "In times of rapid change, the biggest risk is not taking any risk."

Sahil Lavingia's Cursor Live Streams

In June or July last year, I noticed Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia announcing Cursor coding live streams on Twitter. Many people had a common question, same as my Wall Street friend's concern: ChatGPT's web version is already powerful enough, why not just copy-paste?

Sahil emphasized the key difference in his streams: while the efficiency gap is minimal, the biggest difference is that it breaks your flow state. Constant copy-pasting disrupts thinking continuity due to repetitive operations.

The Cursor of that time was completely different from today's version. In just one year, this field's development has been accelerating rapidly.

Visiting Gumroad Headquarters

In December 2024, I visited Sahil at Gumroad's Brooklyn headquarters and

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Gumroad's office was surprisingly "minimalist"—just one small room with everyone crammed together. When I visited, they were preparing for a Christmas party, and Sahil himself was frantically unpacking packages, with absolutely no boss attitude.

This face-to-face conversation gave me deeper insights into Vibe Coding and entrepreneurship.

Claude Code Experience

In February this year, Claude/Anthropic released Claude Code's Research Preview. I applied for beta access through my company and got in. The preview version wasn't much different from the current version, except it was incredibly expensive.

I tweeted about how each task cost $1-2, and I might do hundreds of small tasks daily, so it could cost $100-200 per day. The economic value was quite low due to the high cost.

The Subscription Model

Anthropic recognized the pricing issue and launched a subscription version, like other AI programming tools. Since they're the model provider, they could calculate costs more precisely and take this approach.

I specifically consulted a financially free programmer friend in Vienna who's a business owner. He built and sold a very strong product called PSPDFKit (I believe for hundreds of millions of dollars). He told me Claude Code truly helped him rediscover life's meaning—after achieving financial freedom, he didn't know what to do and hadn't updated his blog for years. Now he's coding frantically and updating constantly.

This is what Vibe Coding brings—the so-called "atmosphere."

Thoughts on the Future

While some think these tools are only for programmers or should only be used by programmers, I believe everyone's perspective is valid. Our community's purpose is to break social media echo chambers and create collisions of inspiration.

Ideas and inspiration aren't valuable by themselves, but if an idea makes you more interested and willing to act, execution speed and efficiency improve dramatically. Sometimes work feels painful not just because of money, but because of a lack of life meaning.

Today Google is releasing new Gemini models. Rumor says it's not a coding model, so our content might not be wasted yet. But even if wasted, that's fine—this is our era. Whether creating content, software, products, or anything else, speed is incredibly fast. You can say it's more competitive, but it actually gives ordinary people opportunities.

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