Scripting News: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 (original) (raw)

It's even worse than it appears..

Yesterday I threw a question out there. "If the web were a platform for writers, how would it work?" I left out specifics, because any specifics I provide might cut off interesting answers. There are three elements in the question: web, platform and writers. The answer must say something about all three. Another way of saying the same thing -- "You're using the web to make the platform to serve the writers."#

Had lunch today with Neal Smoller, our local pharmacy owner. Brilliant young guy who's totally energized by Claude Code.#

• I wonder how many people are working on clones of existing software with an eye toward making a much more evolvable and customizable version with AI at the core of the model. #
• You can make the same software easily, with Claude's help, and if you think about the things users want to customize, you can give them a toolkit for doing exactly what they want in prompts, as opposed to code, plugins, etc.#
• So you don't vibe-code it, you start with an app that's designed to be beautiful on the inside, easy to understand for a new maestro of software, but something they can evolve with prompts so they can be working on something else intently.#
• We provide beautiful code for aspiring symphonists to learn from. #
• I remember when I first got my hands on the Unix source back in 1978. I was blown away by what was possible. I had largely been a Fortran programmer up till then. The pieces don't fit together so well on their own, I learned, you have to move them into place and for that a lot of trying-things-out has to happen.#
• Why am I thinking about this? I have friends who are not programmers who are pretty close to where I was then, waiting to see how real software is made. And they can have that experience soon. I love where we are now in tech. #
• BTW, on its own Claude writes some really shitty code. ;-)#