Cosy coding is having a moment
The rise of female tech content and why your side projects deserve candles and lo-fi music
TLDR
The tools and skillsets we use every day to power corporate goals can also create moments of pure delight just for ourselves. Let's reclaim the use of our 9-5 skillsets for our own exploration and expression!
Romanticise the process of working on our own projects through cosy rituals - dim the big light, light a candle, brew some tea and play some lo-fi, vibey music. Our experiments deserve the same intentionality and care as our day job.
For days when I'm lacking motivation to work on side projects, catch me watching cosy tech content creators like @Nashaery, @Pikacodes and @Gazisj.
The rise of cosy tech content
It started with Nasha Wanich (@Nashaery). Her post appeared in my Instagram feed with soft pink gradients and handwritten-style fonts, casually sharing her latest coding project - a timer app for a crush who overcooked their eggs. I was immediately hooked.
Next was Ale Thomas (@Pikacodes), whose "vibe coding" walkthroughs felt more like casual chats with a friend compared to the dry technical instructions I was used to.
Then came Gazi (@Gazisj), a Google engineer whose home office is drenched in blue-violet light with Studio Ghibli films projected on her wall, sharing cosy "get ready with me to code" videos that make debugging look like self-care.
Before I knew it, I was binge-watching a whole ecosystem of female coding content, and for the first time in my four years working in tech, I realised: wait, coding can be this cosy, cute, and fun?
My previous relationship with technical stuff
I'm not a professional software engineer by any means. However, as a product designer who works with developers and codebases daily, I've always felt I needed to learn the basics of the material I'm designing for.
Over the course of my career, I've tried to learn to code countless times. I've completed courses, watched tutorials, and followed step-by-step instructions. While I've learned enough to get by, I couldn't shake the reality that nothing was truly sticking - I was following instructions but couldn't confidently teach someone else what I'd learned.
Eventually, after yet another <h1>hello world</h1> and cat photo app, I concluded that perhaps this coding thing just wasn't for me. I'd leave the technical stuff to people with "engineering brains" and stick to my lane as a designer.
The reframe
My recent obsession with cosy female coder content signalled a significant mental shift. I realised that what these creators represent isn't just a different aesthetic approach to tech content, it's a fundamental reframe of who gets to build and why.
Instead of coding as an exclusive club for the naturally technical, they're modelling coding as a creative medium available to anyone curious enough to experiment. Instead of celebrating only the most complex, business-minded projects, they're making space for simple, delightful ones.
With their soft colour palettes, customised desktop icons and calming voiceovers, these creators are crafting a coding space that can be warm and welcoming. You belong here too, even if you're still figuring it out.
For someone like me, who's spent years feeling technically adjacent but never technically fluent, this invitation feels revolutionary.
An invitation to experiment and romanticise the process
One thing these creators do brilliantly is romanticise their technical practice. The curated desk setups, the lo-fi playlists, the warm lighting in their coding videos - this isn't just aesthetic choice, it's psychological strategy.
When we create positive associations with creative work, we're more likely to return to it. The candle isn't just ambiance; it's a ritual that signals this time is different from day-job time. This time is mine.
I've started applying this approach when working on career-adjacent projects outside my 9-5. Instead of relying on sheer willpower and a mountain of guilt, I'll light a candle, brew tea, and select a specific playlist that builds a calm and playful vibe (shout out to Loaf on Spotify!). Most importantly, I try to treat these projects as experimental endeavours that happen to require the skillsets I'm learning, rather than focusing on the skillsets themselves. Focusing on experimental reps and iteration rather than perfecting a skillset through one more course.
The work itself might be the same, fumbling through tutorials, clarifying questions with AI, entering commands in the terminal, but the romanticised rituals and reframe into experiments transforms the practice from obligation to play.
A lil' breakthrough moment
Recently, I spent a few of these crafted evenings using Loveable and Cursor to build a simple quote generator. The product brief defies the laws of business case or PRD best practices, and the technical learnings probably aren't that impressive. However, for the first time with the help of AI, I got to really take my time to unpack every "silly little" question I had along the way and go at a pace where I could finally get the gist of each step.
Most importantly, I had an idea, developed it, and deployed it into existence in just a few days.
In that moment, I realised something profound: we are truly in an age of technological democratisation and expanded representation of who can create with code. The very tools and skillsets we use every day to power corporate goals can also be fully utilised to create moments of pure delight just for ourselves.
In the factory churn of professional work, I'd lost sight of the fact that these skills belong to me too. And they don't always have to be put to work toward serious, corporate goals.
The bigger breakthrough
I'm still very much a beginner. I’m still getting my head around Typescript, my understanding of frameworks is mostly theoretical, and I regularly implement code that I probably couldn’t replicate without the help of AI.
But I'm learning. More importantly, I'm enjoying the learning process. Instead of focusing on perfection, I aim for repetition and iteration. Instead of blindly following instructions, I shamelessly use AI to clarify every question that I have.
Currently, my projects are small and silly. None of these will change the world or dramatically advance my career. But they're changing my relationship with the process of building technology. They're proving that the barrier between having ideas and making them real is lower than it's ever been.
The female creators I follow have given me something I didn't realise I was missing: permission to approach technical learning with joy instead of judgment, curiosity instead of pressure, and warmth instead of the cold efficiency that dominates our industry.
So here's to the cosy coders, the soft tech creators, the women who are proving that competence doesn't require masculinity, that skill doesn't demand sterility. Thank you for making technical spaces feel welcoming, for showing us that our tools can create delight, and for reminding us that the best learning happens when we're having fun.
I still can't really code. But I'm no longer afraid to try!