It's even worse than it appears..
Claude is much better at starting from scratch with a big piece of code than humans are. It can suck in a full app and all its dependencies and a few seconds. For me, I would never get there. A finished piece of software is much bigger than people think, because the details are mostly pretty well hidden. But if you want to work on the code, you have to worry about it all. But I just had a minute to ask Claude why I made a certain decision, and it found the answer in its notes and then I remembered it. This is one of many ways it rewrites the rules of building software out of a big library of components. #
Useful concept, MacWrite was the coral reef for writing on the Mac. #

© copyright 1994-2026 Dave Winer.

Last update: Wednesday June 3, 2026; 11:53 AM EDT.

You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)