One of the cool things about having Claude Code is that as we develop this product, we have a near perfect chronology of every consideration and decision made along the way. I don't think that's ever been possible before. I would love to see how the people at Bell Labs put together the first Unix implemenation, what did they talk about, what did they go back and do again once they used the product. Or developers at Xerox PARC, or the process that led to Visicalc, Mac OS or Pagemaker. TBL's first web browser, ChatGPT, etc. Software is a totally intellectual creation, but there is a story for each product, because it's a human doing the design. BTW we had our first faceoff, Claude and I, and I won. Claude said the bug was in my code, I proved it was not, suggested he look at the crazy complicated SQL code he wrote (so glad to have it around for that). Also, I tend to use male pronouns for Claude. Worth mentioning once. (The Computer History Museum should be paying attention.)#
I showed the post above to Claude and that took our conversation off in a new direction. We had been experimenting with the Message Scanner from LBBS, an early version of Twitter I wrote in the early 80s. It's described in this story I wrote in 1988, a summary of what I did leading to the start of UserLand. 38 years later Claude said: "LBBS message scanner running on RSS." #
BTW thinking of LBBS as an early version of Twitter is a contortion, but considering how history played out, accurate. #
Last update: Wednesday July 1, 2026; 10:13 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! :-)