It is hard to imagine writing code today without developing feelings about AI. There is optimism, pessimism, bold claims, historical analogies and most importantly, takes.
Personally, I didn’t use Claude much before the start of the year to write code. After working at Anthropic for 6 months, I knew it was a good partner for riffing on strategy or small code snippets. But outside of that it felt hard to navigate without all the context and decisions that come with a medium to large codebase.
Until I started using Claude Code. It has slowly become integral to my workflow and has expanded what is possible for me. Project that I’ve wanted to take on for years I can prototype in a single session with it.
But it also has been a difficult tool to learn to work with. It oversteps at times and loves to add random CSS to things. Over the past few months it has written alot of bad code. But to be honest so have I. In my career I’ve written code that is unoptimized and duplicated and have shipped bugs to production both knowingly and unknowingly. It is really easy to write bad code. It is also easy to debug and fix bad code once you have more context on how it is being used and breaking.
Since I left The Times in 2021, I’ve been caring less and less about the code and more about what it communicates. Having spent almost a decade and half writing and rewriting the same implantations it begins to feel like the code doesn’t matter. In my art and in my designs the code is just a vehicle for my thoughts and intentions.
Sol LeWitt is famous for saying: “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art”. This can be true for code. Computers can be the implementors of our wills and ideas. Drafting and painting and bringing our ideas to life.
I see a future where software is no longer the domain of subject matter expects. Where code is no longer treated like an illuminated manuscript. It’s syntax and symbols are no longer runes that are indiscernible to the average person.
I see a future where a thousand home cooked meals blossom. Where open-source software blossoms and we each build stacks of interconnected legos that are community owned, developed and operated.
I see a future where my entire industry is decimated. “Learn to code” turning over night from one-part advice and one-part jeer into an outdated falsehood inline with telling people to panhandle gold. A redux of the Luddite’s never headed warnings.
I see that we are in the time of monsters.
-mello
P.S.
