Word count: ~2600 words
Estimated reading time: ~8 minutes
Last updated: August 20, 2025
Is this article for you?
👉 If you’re in marketing or operations, feeling like your growth ideas always get stuck at “waiting for dev resources.”
👉 If you’re tired of manual Excel work and endless copy-pasting, yearning to automate your workflows.
👉 If you want to build core competitive advantages in the AI era, leaping from executor to “full-stack growth talent.”
👉 If you’re curious about the logic behind technology, wanting to understand this digital world from first principles.
Core Structure
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Introduction: The modern marketer’s “Sisyphus dilemma.”
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Redefining Vibe Coding: It’s not programming — it’s digital-age “Lego.”
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Core Argument: Why Vibe Coding is your “atomic skill,” with real-world scenarios.
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Breaking Mental Barriers: The right mindset and approach to starting Vibe Coding.
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Rational Reflection: Beware new “efficiency traps” and “tech thinking.”
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Conclusion: Code is the new “literacy.”
1. Introduction: The “Sisyphus Dilemma” of Marketing and Operations
Hey, I’m Mr. Guo. Let’s imagine an all-too-familiar scenario: Monday’s planning meeting, where you, as a marketing or ops lead, propose an A/B test plan based on user behavior insights, projecting a 15% conversion lift. The team’s excited, the CEO approves. Then you turn to the tech lead, and get: “Great idea, added to the backlog. If all goes well… we should get to it next quarter.”
The air goes silent. This is practically the daily reality for all non-technical professionals — we’re like Sisyphus from Greek mythology, repeatedly pushing the boulder of creativity to the mountain’s base, only to find we lack that final tool to push it to the top. We have insights and strategies, but at the execution level, we’re severely dependent on limited dev resources. We’ve become “cogs” waiting to be scheduled on the digital assembly line. Today, I want to discuss the hammer that breaks this dilemma: Vibe Coding.
2. Redefining Vibe Coding: It’s Not Programming — It’s Digital-Age “Lego”
When “programming” or “code” comes up, many immediately picture black screens, complex algorithms, or years of specialized training in software engineering. Please set aside these preconceptions. The Vibe Coding I advocate has nothing to do with any of that.
Vibe Coding is a state — a “feel-good” coding experience. Its core isn’t building a massive, stable, scalable system, but rather “just-enough” — using the lightest, most direct approach to solve your current most painful specific problem. It’s more like an art of creative assembly using code modules — purpose-driven, lightweight, with immediate feedback.
3. Vibe Coding: Why Is It Your “Atomic Skill”?
This skill is becoming the core competitive advantage of our era. I call it an “atomic skill” — a foundational capability that can catalyze fission in all your other skills. In reality, many marketing and ops tasks become far more efficient with just a bit of technical knowledge.
When you’re accustomed to operating a headless blog through CLI AI agents like Claude Code, you’ll find every GUI blog backend in the world incredibly inefficient by comparison.
Vibe Coding Real-World Scenarios: Three “God Mode” Moments
Scenario 1: Using Google Maps + Scraping for Precision B2B Lead Generation
Traditional foreign trade prospecting means posting on B2B platforms and waiting for inquiries — extremely inefficient. A BD person who knows Vibe Coding can write a simple Python scraping script to batch-collect business information from Google Maps for specific regions and industries (like “dental clinics in Los Angeles”), including names, addresses, phone numbers, even websites. Then scrape those websites again to find contact emails. In one day, you can build a list of thousands of precise potential customers — unimaginable in the past.
Scenario 2: Using AI + Scraping for Link Building and Email Automation
For SEO professionals, link building is core work but extremely time-consuming. You can write a scraper to first collect the top 100 industry blogs, then automatically analyze their articles to find ones relevant to your product. Then call the GPT-4 API to generate a highly personalized outreach email for each article (e.g., “I read your article about XX, and your YY point was excellent — our product ZZ happens to complement one of your arguments…”). Finally, automatically send those emails. The entire process compresses what used to take weeks into one day.
Scenario 3: Using Shopify API + AI for Lightning-Fast Product Listings with Optimization
A DTC brand’s ops person needing to list 100 new SKUs manually might need an entire day. But with Vibe Coding, you can write a script that first reads an Excel spreadsheet with all basic product info (SKU numbers, prices), then batch-creates products via the Shopify API. Even better, make the script call AI for each product name to generate attractive, SEO-compliant product descriptions and meta tags. The whole process — done in the time it takes to drink a coffee.
4. Breaking Mental Barriers: The Right Approach to Starting Vibe Coding
By now, you might be excited but still doubtful: “I have zero background — can I really learn this?” Yes. The key is adopting the right approach.
🔑 Core Mindset: Learning isn’t the goal — practicing and achieving your objectives is. Desperately avoid falling into “Tutorial Hell” — that trap of watching 100 videos but still not solving a single real problem.
Problem-Driven Learning Loop:
- Step 1: Lock onto a “nail” problem that causes you pain.
Don’t think “I need to learn Python.” Think “I need to solve this stupid ‘weekly manual report merging’ problem.” The more specific and painful your problem, the stronger your motivation.
- Step 2: Pair-program with your AI mentor.
AI is your best teacher. Describe your “nail problem” in plain language to GPT-4 or Claude, have it generate initial code, and ask it to explain “line by line like teaching a three-year-old.” This process is the most valuable practice.
- Step 3: Deliver an “ugly but working” V1.
Your goal is solving the problem, not writing elegant code. As long as the script runs, even if the process is messy, you’ve already succeeded 90%. First make it work, then make it better.
- Step 4: Build your “hybrid brain.”
Through problem-solving, you’ll naturally encounter engineering thinking (how to break big problems into small steps) and user thinking (what problem am I really trying to solve). This compound mindset is the greatest wealth Vibe Coding gives you.
- Step 5: Bravely engage with engineers.
Don’t fear discussing with real technical people. When you can describe requirements in more technical language with your AI partner’s help (like “I want to call this API endpoint and get the user_id field from the returned JSON”), you’ll find communication efficiency greatly improved. Ask humbly, share your ideas boldly — actually, most programmers welcome ops and product people who can communicate in “the same language.”
5. Warning: Don’t Fall Into New “Efficiency Traps”
Here, I must offer a rational warning. Once you’ve gained some coding ability, it’s easy to fall into a new “efficiency trap” — tech thinking over-expansion. You’ll start obsessing over which library is more efficient, how to write more standardized code, or even spending 5 hours writing a script to automate a task that only takes 10 minutes monthly.
Remember, unless you plan to fully transition to being a programmer, your core value remains your market insights and growth strategies. Vibe Coding is a lever to amplify your value, not your profession itself. Always use business ROI to evaluate every “tech investment.” Nietzsche reminds us, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.” Don’t become a “tool person” who only cares about technical implementation details while forgetting business goals in the battle against repetitive work.
6. Conclusion: Code Is the New “Literacy”
Throughout human history, every revolution in information media has reshaped power distribution. From oral to written, those who mastered writing became elites; from printing press to internet, those who mastered information distribution defined public discourse.
Today, in the AI-driven digital world, code is the new “literacy.” It’s a language that lets you precisely communicate your intent to machines, making machines extensions of your thought. Learning Vibe Coding isn’t about becoming a programmer — it’s about gaining a foundational, fundamental “reading and writing ability” in this era. This is about freedom, about whether you can implement your ideas without compromise, ultimately having the agency to shape a small corner of your own in this world built of code.
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