In a related idea...
Sort of a PHP-like, folder based web serving tool that executes Javascript. Very quick and fluid.
HN user
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/tqwhite; my proof: https://keybase.io/tqwhite/sigs/D6HLxWzxsoNyzlKjEhveAfuLA42QtYa0L-wBK6MoGpk ]
In a related idea...
Sort of a PHP-like, folder based web serving tool that executes Javascript. Very quick and fluid.
At least, pay them for the inferior intelligence until Donald Trump says you can.
Donald Trump cares about it and frequently uses our government to abuse people he does not like, to carry out grudges and vendettas.
There is no doubt in my mind that he is personally pissed because Anthropic stood up to him.
Just use a Macintosh. You can simply tell it to be fn keys instead.
So, you do without. Easy Peasy.
If, like me, you specifically do not want third parties inside the Apple ecosystem, Apple has done a great job. I totally hate the EU's insistence of tearing down Apple's walled garden. That is a huge reason I like their products so much.
AS we all have complained, Apple has been working on Apple Intelligence for, roughly speaking, forever. Their private compute cloud thing and the protocols that protect it have, I bet, been in place for years. That's what you are missing.
The EU isn't asking for more privacy. This is about interoperability and competition. They don't like Apple controlling the AI interface and want a portal. They want Apple to put a backdoor into their system to allow third parties to access the data. This is insanely difficult to do while maintaining Apple's super-strict (yay!) privacy policy.
Another upgrade. Now the skill knows to create a containing folder with index.html if none exists and then to link any new docs to it.
Now I have a favorite in my bookmark bar for each project I am working on that shows me the docs.
I'm so happy.
By "planning", I actually meant "thought of one time". So, I did it.
The endpoint verifies that the destination specified by the POST is in my project folder. If it points at an existing file, it creates a version. It does not overwrite.
I added a CLI, watchFile, that blocks Claude until the file shows up.
And made a skill that tells Claude to respond nicely to "Make an interactive document that...".
Claude Code has basically made software functionality, "Your wishes come true".
This makes me think of a thing I have been planning to do. Maybe one of you will do it and tell me some cool refinements.
I run a web server on my Mac. Consequently, I have an HTTP process available. I keep intending to make an endpoint that Claude can use. I would tell it to make a document for commenting (or put a list of options or whatever) and post it to, I guess, the planning folder we are working in. The endpoint would know how to do this because I wrote it.
When it gets there, I would, I wanted to keep it, tell Claude to integrate the results into the file as static HTML. Or, if I don't care about that, just read it and do whatever I said and leave it disconnected.. The goal isn't to make a website.
This supports interactive conversations with Claude via HTML.
I can edit html. Also, I don't bother with html editing. If it's a doc that needs editing, I just tell Claude to format it for ease of editing and then I just go through and type whatever crap I want to say. Then I ask Claude to clean it up.
BUT, I only do this as an easy way of referencing specific ideas and text in notes to instruct Claude. I say, "I have added notes. Read them and adjust the doc accordingly." Or, "Read the notes I added. Turn them into html."
It's an insanely productive pattern.
YES YES YES and MORE YES
Generating markdown is faster so unlike our friend here, I still do use it for straightforward things.
BUT, in general, I tell Claude, "I think we should starting a project planning folder for this. Put (the stuff we just talked about) into an html doc. while you're at it, make an index.html and put relative link to the page with a little explanation of what we are up to."
Or, just yesterday Claude and I worked out the design for a substantial AI enabled database tool. I had it make an explanatory doc for my team. It was a single html file that navigated through forty scenes that demonstrated it. MAGIC.
If you aren't doing your collaboration with Claude in html, listen to this guy. Your life and work will be better.
"in practice"? Disrespectful, of course, but also not true.
In practice, most designers know what they are doing as well as you know your job. If yours doesn't, you hired a quack.
Here. Try this, in practice, most business owners don't know what they are doing. In practice, most programmers write shit. It's easy to bitch at artists because most people don't understand what they do. Don't be one of those people.
I don't see it as a misstep at all. The purpose of StackOVerflow is to share expertise.
I am 100% supportive of it being used for training... AI, you, everyone.
Tough call giving up a good job. Admiration.
Don't have it do things for you. Have it do things with you.
I have had things like your React instead of Vue problem. I solved it by always having Claude write a full implementation spec/plan in markdown which I give to a fresh context Claude to implement. Typically, I have comments and make it revise until I am happy.
It has basically eliminated surprises like that.
Back then, also around May, I had Claude 3.old destroy a working app. Those were sad old days.
Hasn't happened in a long time. Opus 4.6 is a miracle improvement.
An advantage I have enjoyed is that I am insanely careful about my fundamental architecture and I have a project scaffold that works correctly.
It has examples of all the parts of a web app written, over many years, to be my own ideal structure. When the LLM era arrived, I added a ton of comments explaining what, why and how.
It turns out to serves as a sort of seed crystal for decent code. Though, if I do not remind it to mimic that architecture, it sometimes doesn't and that's very weird.
Still, that's a tip I suggest. Give it examples of good code that are commented to explain why its good.
I would love it if someone explained what their ten agents Ralphing away were actually told to do.
I suppose if you are doing something that truly can be decided based on a test but, I just don't see it, at least for anything I do.
YES YES YES!! I so wish that we could go back in time and never, ever have even suggested anything other that what you say here. AI doesn't do it for you. It does it with you.
You have to figure out what you want before the AI codes. The thinking BEFORE is the entire game.
Though I will also say that I use Claude for working out designs a lot. Literally hours sometimes with long periods of me thinking it through.
And I still get a ton more done and often use tech that I would never have approached before these glory days.
Every time I try to use Claude Desktop, I quickly feel like it's like trying to type wearing mittens. No bueno, at least for me.
My wife calls Claude my girlfriend.
I do a ton of programming but I also use it to learn all kinds of stuff. I'm into physics, history and philosophy and have done wonderful explorations.
Now I tell it what I had for breakfast just to see what it says. Half the time it says something interesting and I end up exploring another new thing.
"My people" for sure and everyone is mad at me because I think that.
Also, I don't care what they think. I am all about the fun.
The brainstorming, investigation and planning are so much fun, aren't they?
Having an infinitely patient, super smart colleague available all the time is amazing.
I have been making web apps for years. A few year ago I converted my base stack into a scaffold that lets me spin up a full working project with API, CLI and UI.
I use NodeJS with a highly structured ExpressJS app for the API. It uses an npm module, tools-library-dot-d to implement a carefully scooped plugin structure for endpoints, data model and data mapping. It has built-in authentication and database (sqlite).
Nuxt/Vue/Vuetify/Pinia for the UI. It has a few components that implement things (like navigation) the way I like. It supports login and user editing.
The stack includes a utility that looks at a directory for executable CLI tools (usually NodeJS or BASH) and adds them to the session PATH. The API stack has boilerplate to treat CLI apps as data-model services.
Does that help?
I'm with you so much. I had to buy the big Max plan. My wife calls Claude my new girlfriend. (Good thing she's ok with being in a cyber-thruple .)
I'm having more fun than I've had in years.
I am a professional for forty five years.
Your description of the experience tells me that you have not figured out how to do it correctly.
I NEVER have bad experiences like that. I absolutely DO create production grade software reliably every day.
Treat it as collaborator instead of as a servant. You will get much better results.
A thing I think a lot in the conversations about AI is this:
You don't have any choice. Good or bad. It's here. Get over it.
I know that back in the day, people said automobiles were bad and evil and costing the buggywhip makers their jobs. Unfortunately for them, the decision to use cars had already been made.
I do AI with fervor because I live in the real world and the decision has already been made. You can't stop AI by pretending it's optional.
Adapt or die.
What a good insight.
The people who are pained by AI subsuming something they do forget that it empowers them to do a million other things.