I Can’t Code. I Read the Comments

How do you make an app without coding? I can’t write code, and I still built Spohad. Together with AI agents I have written 1.4 million lines of code, and half of them were rewritten or thrown out. What remains is 668,000 lines, and I understand how they work. More than ten thousand changes in under six months. Because this whole year I have been learning by building it. Not syntax. Engineering.

How did this become possible?

Not long ago, building an app without a technical background was almost impossible. You needed a team: programmers, designers, testers. A person with an idea could only look for someone to build it for them.

Today the bar is different. AI agents write the code, and a person tells them what is needed. This is called vibe coding. And it means you can now build not what sells well, but what is convenient for you.

I had such an idea for a long time: for ten years I looked for a way to sort my photos from my phone, lying in bed, and never found one. How it started I described in Why I built Spohad. I made the first version for myself on a computer with AI assistants. Then I bought a Mac, signed up for AI coding agents and started building the real app. Almost every day, from morning to evening, often at night too. It is my first product of my own.

Who is responsible for what?

The agents and I agreed on this. I am responsible for looks and feel: how a screen looks, how a swipe feels, where a button sits, what deleting sounds like. They are responsible for everything under the hood: how it works, how fast, how to keep the phone cool.

But I didn’t want to be a client who doesn’t understand what he was given. I wanted to understand.

Engineering, not syntax

Engineering. How everything works, what is connected to what, why it is done this way and not another. Code is unreadable symbols to me. How a program is built is not.

My way in is comments. Code contains human sentences that explain what a piece does and why. I asked for them to be in my language and written so that a non-programmer can understand them.

Now every file starts with a short story. What lives here. Why it is this way and not another. What breaks if you touch it. Something like: “The feed is not rebuilt after Save, otherwise the person would lose their place.” That I understand. And I can argue with it.

Learning by building

When something doesn’t work the way I wanted, I don’t dig into the code. I read the comment and ask: why did you decide it this way? Sometimes the agent is right, and I learn something new: how the phone’s memory works, why you can’t read the whole drive at once, why an animation heats the processor. Sometimes I am right, and then the rule gets rewritten.

Maybe it could have been done faster. But for me it mattered not just to finish, but to learn how to do it right. That is why about a third of all of Spohad’s code is tests: programs that check other programs. They catch a mistake before a person ever sees it. That may be the main lesson of the year: done right means checked.

Reports, not lines

Besides comments, I read reports. Every task ends with a story in plain words: what was done, what changed for the person, what is debatable. I answer “yes” or “no”, and check it on my own phone. With my eyes, my finger, my feel.

In short: how I build an app without coding

1. I decide how the app should look and feel; that is my part.
2. I give the AI agents the task in words, as I would to a person.
3. I ask for the code to be explained in comments in my language, clear to a non-programmer.
4. I read the comments and reports, ask “why this way” and argue.
5. I check the result on my own phone and say “yes” or “no”.

What came of it

A strange way to build an app. But it works. Spohad is built the way that is convenient for me, and I understand why every feature is in it. Why, for example, it has this name is in What Spohad means. And you can look at the result right on the home page.

If you also have an idea you keep putting off because “I’m not a programmer”, maybe it is time to start. You can learn along the way.